This section describes the options of the sql() destination in syslog-ng OSE.

The following options are available for an stdout destiantion.

flags()

Type: no-multi-line, syslog-protocol
Default: empty set

Description: Flags influence the behavior of the destination driver.

  • no-multi-line: The no-multi-line flag disables line-breaking in the messages: the entire message is converted to a single line.

  • syslog-protocol: The syslog-protocol flag instructs the driver to format the messages according to the new IETF syslog protocol standard (RFC-5424), but without the frame header. If this flag is enabled, macros used for the message have effect only for the text of the message, the message header is formatted to the new standard. Note that this flag is not needed for the syslog driver, and that the syslog driver automatically adds the frame header to the messages.

flush-lines()

Type: number
Default: Use global setting (exception: for http() destination, the default is 1).

Description: Specifies how many lines are flushed to a destination at a time. The syslog-ng OSE application waits for this number of lines to accumulate and sends them off in a single batch. Increasing this number increases throughput as more messages are sent in a single batch, but also increases message latency.

The syslog-ng OSE application flushes the messages if it has sent flush-lines() number of messages, or the queue became empty. If you stop or reload syslog-ng OSE or in case of network sources, the connection with the client is closed, syslog-ng OSE automatically sends the unsent messages to the destination.

For optimal performance when sending messages to an syslog-ng OSE server, make sure that the value of flush-lines() is smaller than the window size set in the log-iw-size() option in the source of your server.

flush-timeout()

Type: time [milliseconds]
Default: 10 000 milliseconds

Description: Specifies the time syslog-ng OSE waits for lines to accumulate in the output buffer. The syslog-ng OSE application sends flushes to the destinations evenly. The timer starts when the first message arrives to the buffer, so if only few messages arrive, syslog-ng OSE sends messages to the destination at most once every flush-timeout() seconds.

frac-digits()

Type: number
Default: 0

Description: The syslog-ng OSE application can store fractions of a second in the timestamps according to the ISO8601 format. The frac-digits() parameter specifies the number of digits stored. The digits storing the fractions are padded by zeros if the original timestamp of the message specifies only seconds. Fractions can always be stored for the time the message was received.

NOTE: The syslog-ng OSE application can add the fractions to non-ISO8601 timestamps as well.

NOTE: As syslog-ng OSE is precise up to the microsecond, when the frac-digits() option is set to a value higher than 6, syslog-ng OSE will truncate the fraction seconds in the timestamps after 6 digits.

local-time-zone()

Type: name of the timezone, or the timezone offset
Default: The local timezone.

Description: Sets the timezone used when expanding filename and tablename templates.

The timezone can be specified by using the name, for example, time-zone("Europe/Budapest")), or as the timezone offset in +/-HH:MM format, for example, +01:00). On Linux and UNIX platforms, the valid timezone names are listed under the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory.

log-fifo-size()

Type: number
Default: Use global setting.

Description: The number of messages that the output queue can store.

mark-freq()

Accepted values: number [seconds]
Default: 1200

Description: An alias for the obsolete mark() option, retained for compatibility with syslog-ng OSE version 1.6.x.

The number of seconds between two MARK messages. MARK messages are generated when there was no message traffic to inform the receiver that the connection is still alive. If set to zero (0), no MARK messages are sent. The mark-freq() can be set for global option and/or every MARK capable destination driver if mark-mode() is periodical or dst-idle or host-idle. If mark-freq() is not defined in the destination, then the mark-freq() will be inherited from the global options. If the destination uses internal mark-mode(), then the global mark-freq() will be valid (does not matter what mark-freq() set in the destination side).

mark-mode()

Accepted values: internal | dst-idle | host-idle | periodical | none | global  
Default: internal for pipe, program drivers, none for file, unix-dgram, unix-stream drivers, global for syslog, tcp, udp destinations, host-idle for global option  

Description: The mark-mode() option can be set for the following destination drivers: file(), program(), unix-dgram(), unix-stream(), network(), pipe(), syslog() and in global option.

NOTE: In case of dst-idle, host-idle and periodical, the MARK message will not be written in the destination, if it is not open yet.

Available in syslog-ng OSE 3.4 and later.

pad-size()

Type: number
Default: 0

Description: Specifies input padding. Some operating systems (such as HP-UX) pad all messages to block boundary. This option can be used to specify the block size. The syslog-ng OSE application will pad reads from the associated device to the number of bytes set in pad-size(). Mostly used on HP-UX where /dev/log is a named pipe and every write is padded to 2048 bytes. If pad-size() was given and the incoming message does not fit into pad-size(), syslog-ng OSE will not read anymore from this pipe and displays the following error message:

Padding was set, and couldn’t read enough bytes

persist-name()

Type: string
Default: N/A

Description: If you receive the following error message during syslog-ng OSE startup, set the persist-name() option of the duplicate drivers:

Error checking the uniqueness of the persist names, please override it with persist-name option. Shutting down.

or

Automatic assignment of persist names failed, as conflicting persist names were found. Please override the automatically assigned identifier using an explicit persist-name() option or remove the duplicated configuration elements.

This error happens if you use identical drivers in multiple sources, for example, if you configure two file sources to read from the same file. In this case, set the persist-name() of the drivers to a custom string, for example, persist-name(“example-persist-name1”).

send-time-zone()

Accepted values: name of the timezone, or the timezone offset
Default: local timezone

Description: Specifies the time zone associated with the messages sent by syslog-ng OSE, if not specified otherwise in the message or in the destination driver.

For details, see also Timezones and daylight saving and A note on timezones and timestamps.

The timezone can be specified by using the name, for example, time-zone(“Europe/Budapest”), or as the timezone offset in +/-HH:MM format, for example, +01:00. On Linux and UNIX platforms, the valid timezone names are listed under the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory.

suppress()

Type: seconds
Default: 0 (disabled)

Description: If several identical log messages would be sent to the destination without any other messages between the identical messages (for example, an application repeated an error message ten times), syslog-ng OSE can suppress the repeated messages and send the message only once, followed by the Last message repeated n times. message. The parameter of this option specifies the number of seconds syslog-ng OSE waits for identical messages.

template()

Synopsis: template("${<macroname>}")

Description: The macro that contains the part of the message that the parser will process. It can also be a macro created by a previous parser of the log path. By default, the parser processes the entire message (${MESSAGE}).

template-escape()

Type: yes or no
Default: no

Description: Turns on escaping for the ', ", and backspace characters in templated output files. This is useful for generating SQL statements and quoting string contents so that parts of the log message are not interpreted as commands to the SQL server.

NOTE: In syslog-ng OSE 4.5 and later versions template-escape(yes) escapes the top-level template function in case of nested template functions.

throttle()

Type: number
Default: 0

Description: Sets the maximum number of messages sent to the destination per second. Use this output-rate-limiting functionality only when using disk-buffer as well to avoid the risk of losing messages. Specifying 0 or a lower value sets the output limit to unlimited.

time-zone()

Type: name of the timezone, or the timezone offset
Default:  

Description: The default timezone for messages read from the source. Applies only if no timezone is specified within the message itself.

The timezone can be specified by using the name, for example, time-zone(“Europe/Budapest”)), or as the timezone offset in +/-HH:MM format, for example, +01:00). On Linux and UNIX platforms, the valid timezone names are listed under the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory.

ts-format()

Type: rfc3164, bsd, rfc3339, iso
Default: rfc3164

Description: Override the global timestamp format (set in the global ts-format() parameter) for the specific destination. For details, see ts-format().

NOTE: This option applies only to file and file-like destinations. Destinations that use specific protocols (for example, network(), or syslog()) ignore this option. For protocol-like destinations, use a template locally in the destination, or use the proto-template() option.

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