November 2008 - syslog-ng - lists.balabit.hu

fails if dns error resolve hostname destination forwarding
by JV 12 Nov '08

12 Nov '08

Tried searching in google and the mailing archives... I'm on syslog-ng-2.0.9 and it refuses to start if i have a filter like filter f_11 { level(info..emerg); }; destination d_8 { udp("sysremote" port(514)); }; log { source(s_sys); filter(f_11); destination(d_8); }; and sysremote is not resolvable via my DNS or /etc/hosts You'd think syslog-ng-2.0.9 would continue to run and do the other filters which is to log locally instead of refusing to run at all. Thats how the builtin syslog works i believe. This limits our ability to swap out replace syslog with syslog-ng since local logging should not fail just because dns is unreachable ? Am I missing something. Thanks in advance.

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syslog-ng refuses to open/write destination file
by Peck, Jonathan 12 Nov '08

12 Nov '08

Hello... Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have configured syslog-ng to add a custom application filter and log destination. Let me preface all works when I configure the destination to be in /var/log. However, due to operational needs the file needs to be written off to a directory in /usr/local/ssl/<application location>. Here's the tricky part. The /usr/local/ssl/<application> is actually being exported by a NFS server as a share. I thought perhaps that was the issue as I do see a "cannot open file for writing, permission denied" vomited by syslog-ng and stamped when I kick start the application. I checked the permissions on directory and the log file. They are all good. I am able to touch, create, destroy, move, copy etc data on that directory. It only appears syslog-ng is having the trouble. What makes it more goofy is when I manipulate how I kick start the app (via shell or daemon) sometimes I see the permission error sometimes I do not. Ultimately syslog-ng still just stamps everything to 'messages'. Question, does syslog-ng have a configuration for writing off your destination file to an NFS share? I've never had this problem appear before. Perhaps someone has some experience to lend a hand? Appreciate it in advance! Cheers - Jonathan ----------------------------------------- The information in this message may be proprietary and/or confidential, and protected from disclosure. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify First Data immediately by replying to this message and deleting it from your computer.

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Re: [syslog-ng] syslog-ng takes 100% CPU when network fails
by D S, Manu (STSD) 06 Nov '08

06 Nov '08

This patch fixes the issue. Thanks! - Manu > > Hi, > > > > We are running syslog-ng 2.0.9 on a HP-UX 11.31 server. We > have configured this system as a client to forward logs to a remote > server. When there is a network failure ( simulated by ifconfig down ) > syslog-ng starts to consume CPU and even after the network comes back, > it does not forward any log messages and continues to hog CPU. > > > > We did system call tracing using tusc and found that "poll()" > gets "POLLERR" event from TCP socket descriptor, but syslog-ng does not > call any socket calls for the TCP, only calls "gettimeofday()". > > > > In the logs given, TCP connection to server is disconnected > at 13:10:30. From that time, poll() receives POLLERR on the TCP socket > (fd=6) and starts loop on gettimeofday(). Attached are the sar, > netstat and tusc logs. > > First of all, Thanks for the detailed error report. > > As I see the problem seems to be caused by the fact that HP-UX returns > POLLERR only without the other bits (e.g. POLLHUP) syslog-ng would > handle this gracefully if either the other bits would be set, or > there'd > be some pending messages to send, in which case a normal write() error > would occur. > > This patch should fix the problem, although I only compile-tested it. > I'd appreciate if you could test this patch in your environment. > > diff --git a/src/logwriter.c b/src/logwriter.c > index bb82b43..7a5fcf7 100644 > --- a/src/logwriter.c > +++ b/src/logwriter.c > @@ -139,6 +139,13 @@ log_writer_fd_dispatch(GSource *source, > log_writer_broken(self->writer, NC_CLOSE); > return FALSE; > } > + else if (self->pollfd.revents & (G_IO_ERR)) > + { > + msg_error("POLLERR occurred while idle", > + evt_tag_int("fd", self->fd->fd), > + NULL); > + log_writer_broken(self->writer, NC_WRITE_ERROR); > + } > else if (self->writer->queue->length || self->writer->partial) > { > if (!log_writer_flush_log(self->writer, self->fd)) > > > > > > -- > Bazsi >

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Problems compiling on RHEL 5 (flex error)
by Douglas E. Warner 06 Nov '08

06 Nov '08

I'm getting the following error trying to build packages for RHEL5: flex `test -f cfg-lex.l || echo './'`cfg-lex.l "cfg-lex.l", line 1: unrecognized '%' directive "cfg-lex.l", line 3: bad character: # "cfg-lex.l", line 3: unknown error processing section 1 "cfg-lex.l", line 3: bad character: " "cfg-lex.l", line 3: bad character: . "cfg-lex.l", line 3: bad character: " "cfg-lex.l", line 5: bad character: } make[2]: *** [cfg-lex.c] Error 1 make[2]: Any ideas on what I can do here? -Doug

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[PATCH] anonymizing filter
by Micah Anderson 06 Nov '08

06 Nov '08

Hello, A couple years ago this patch was submitted to the list for consideration for inclusion into syslog-ng. I am writing this email again to request that it be considered again. The patch provides a simple replace which enables you to strip out IP addresses from your logs before they are written to disk. The patch has been included in the Debian stable distribution, and currently is included in both Debian Sid and Lenny (unstable and testing). It has had a very wide testing base and is non-intrusive, it has existed since 2004 and has been adapted to work with the newer syslog-ng. The goal of this patch is to give an organization the means to implement site logging policies, by allowing for easy control over exactly what data is retained in the logfiles. When I first requested consideration for inclusion the reactions were some suggestions for improvement (which were done), some side discussions about the various states of data retention laws, and a general agreement that this patch is non-intrusive and had a valid use case (at least in the U.S., but also likely in other countries as well[0]). The side-discussions about data-retention laws were mostly around specific geographic localities that were considering laws that would make stripping of addresses illegal, or had already mandated such things. Although these were interesting discussions, as EU data retention laws would prohibit many people from making such configuration changes to their syslog-ng.conf, they were tangential to the point because this patch does not cause those to break such laws. On the other side of the pond, in the U.S., the EFF[1] has made it very clear that this mechanism of anonymizing logs is perfectly (a) legal in the U.S., and (b) advisable. There are many instances where it is preferable to keep less information on users than is collected by default on many systems. In the United States it is not currently required to retain data on users of a server, but you may be required to provide all data on a user which you have retained. OSPs can protect themselves from legal hassles and added work by choosing what data they wish to retain. The current climate in the U.S. makes this problem so much more important now than it was many years ago. Having the ability to implement a site-policy that enables an organization to decide if the trade-off between privacy and analysis is worthwhile. This patch allows organizations to have that choice if they feel that it is more important to avoid retaining sensitive data rather than having a full history of everything logged. Please accept this patch[2], Micah [0] EPIC International Data Retention Page http://www.epic.org/privacy/intl/data_retention.html [1] The EFF is the major civil liberties internet watchdog in the US, their "Best Practices for Online Service Providers" can be found here: http://www.eff.org/osp, they explicitly link to our patch as a recommendation [2] The latest patch can be found at https://code.autistici.org/trac/privacy/browser/trunk/syslog-ng

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Re: [syslog-ng] Encoding provlem when writing to postgres
by ml＠bortal.de 05 Nov '08

05 Nov '08

Hi, where can i get syslog-ng 3.0? I cant find it on http://www.balabit.com/downloads/files/syslog-ng/sources/ Thanks, Mario Am 15.10.2008 um Uhr haben Sie geschrieben: > On Wed, 2008-10-15 at 09:53 +0200, ml(a)bortal.de wrote: > > Hello List, > > > > How can i fix this? I am running postgresql-8.1 with Debian 4.0. > > Probably the syslog client sends non-utf8 characters in its message. > syslog-ng 2.0 and 2.1 do not really care about the message contents. > > 3.0 has support for various encodings and utf8 validation like this: > > This assumes that the input is latin1: > > source s_net { udp(encoding("iso-8859-1")); }; > > And this one enforces valid utf8 messages > > source s_net { udp(flags(validate-utf8)); }; > > I was planning to add another flag, but this is not yet implemented: > > source s_net { udp(flags(force-utf8)); }; > > Which would enforce valid utf8 sequences by changing the input. > > As an alternative don't use utf8 as the character encoding of your > database, use latin1, that'll permit any kind of data in the database. >

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syslog-ng .2.1.1 AIX module libglib-2.0.a(libglib-2.0.so.0) could not be loaded
by CentralRegion IPAdmin 05 Nov '08

05 Nov '08

Hi I have configured and compiled syslog-ng 2.1.1 on AIX 5.2 using the DEFAULT configure options. I can start the binary on the device where I have compiled it, but when I transfer it to another AIX device I'm getting an error saying "Could not load program ./syslog-ng.2.1.1: Dependent module libglib-2.0.a(libglib-2.0.so.0) could not be loaded. Could not load module libglib-2.0.a(libglib-2.0.so.0). System error: No such file or directory" I have tried the same with version 2.0.9 - This works fine. Do you have an idea what I have to change for 2.1.1? Thank You! Werner Keuler

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No such DBI driver; type='pgsql'
by ml＠bortal.de 05 Nov '08

05 Nov '08

Hello List, i successfully compiled version 2.9.0+20081022. I used: LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/lib LIBS=-ldbi ./configure --enable-sql But when i start syslog-ng i get this error: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- syslog-db:~# syslog-ng -F -v -f /etc/syslog-ng.conf -e -v Configuration file has no version number, assuming syslog-ng 2.1 format. Please add @version: maj.min to the beginning of the file; WARNING: global: the default value of chain_hostnames is changing to 'no' in version 3.0, please update your configuration accordingly; Your configuration file uses an obsoleted keyword, please update your configuration; keyword='sync', change='flush_lines' Your configuration file uses an obsoleted keyword, please update your configuration; keyword='stats', change='stats_freq' WARNING: input: sources do not remove new-line characters from messages by default in version 3.0, please add 'no-multi-line' flag to your configuration if you want to retain this functionality; WARNING: file source: default value of follow_freq in file sources is changing in 3.0 to '1' for all files except /proc/kmsg; WARNING: template: the default value for template-escape is changing to 'no' in version 3.0, please update your configuration file accordingly; syslog-ng starting up; version='2.9.0+20081022' Database thread started; No such DBI driver; type='pgsql' My Syslog Config looks like this: ========================== options { chain_hostnames(off); sync(0); stats(43200); }; source src { unix-stream("/dev/log"); internal(); pipe("/proc/kmsg"); }; source src_remote { tcp(ip("foo") port(514) max-connections(20)); }; destination d_sql { # source s_net { udp(encoding("iso-8859-1")); }; # source s_net { udp(flags(validate-utf8)); }; sql(type(pgsql) host("212.87.146.204") username("foo") password("bar") database("syslogng") table("msg_table") columns("msg_rcv_time", "msg_sent_time", "hostname", "msg_facility", "msg_priority", "msg_text") values($R_ISODATE, $S_ISODATE, $HOST, $FACILITY, $PRIORITY, $MSG) ); }; destination messages { file("/var/log/messages"); }; log { source(src_remote); source(src); destination(messages); destination(d_sql); }; Any Idea how to fix this? Cheers, Mario

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Real Time Alerting message from Syslog-ng!
by Wilson Lai 05 Nov '08

05 Nov '08

Hi, I am implementing the real time alert messages in Syslog-ng by using the following script : # TO=wilsonlai(a)abc.com # while read line # do # hostname=`echo $line | awk '{print $4}'`; # echo $line | /bin/mail -s "Syslog Alert Messages from HOST : $hostname" $TO # done My question is while using readline, sometimes the hostname could not be displayed correctly and give the hostname “Report” as the following event message collected : Nov 5 15:57:19 report server (mssqlserver)[error] 106 Scheduled operations cannot be created. SQL Server Agent is not running. How could it be fixed? Thanks. Regards, Wilson Lai System Engineer IT Dept., SJM Office ( : (853)2978585 Mobile ( : (853)66506709 Email ( : wilsonlai(a)macausjm.com

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