Dear syslog-ng users,

We are pleased to announce the 4.5.0 version of syslog-ng, which has been released and is now available on GitHub:

https://github.com/syslog-ng/syslog-ng/releases/tag/syslog-ng-4.5.0

Packages are also available for various platforms. The AxoSyslog project provides cloud-ready container images, Helm charts.

4.5.0

Read Axoflow's blog post for more details.
You can read more about the new features in the AxoSyslog documentation.

Highlights

Sending log messages to OpenObserve

The openobserve-log() destination feeds OpenObserve via the JSON API.

Example config:

openobserve-log(
    url("http://openobserve-endpoint")
    port(5080)
    stream("default")
    user("root@example.com")
    password("V2tsn88GhdNTKxaS")
);

(#4698)

Sending messages to Google Pub/Sub

The google-pubsub() destination feeds Google Pub/Sub via the HTTP REST API.

Example config:

google-pubsub(
  project("syslog-ng-project")
  topic("syslog-ng-topic")
  auth(
    service-account(
      key("/path/to/service-account-key.json")
    )
  )
);

See the Google Pub/Sub documentation to learn more about configuring a service account.
(#4651)

Parsing PostgreSQL logs

The postgresql-csvlog-parser(): add a new parser to process CSV log formatted by
PostgreSQL (https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-logging.html).
The CSV format is extracted into a set of name-value pairs.
(#4586)

Features

• http(): Added support for using templates in the url() option.

  In syslog-ng a template can only be resolved on a single message, as the same
  template might have different resolutions on different messages. A http batch
  consists of multiple messages, so it is not trivial to decide which message should
  be used for the resolution.

  When batching is enabled and multiple workers are configured it is important to
  only batch messages which generate identical URLs. In this scenario one must set
  the worker-partition-key() option with a template that contains all the templates
  used in the url() option, otherwise messages will be mixed.

  For security reasons, all the templated contents in the url() option are getting
  URL encoded automatically. Also the following parts of the url cannot be templated:

  • scheme
  • host
  • port
  • user
  • password
    (#4663)

• $TRANSPORT: this is a new name-value pair that syslog-ng populates
  automatically. It indicates the "transport" mechanism used to
  retrieve/receive the message. It is up to the source driver to determine
  the value. Currently the following values were implemented:

  BSD syslog drivers: tcp(), udp() & network()

  • rfc3164+tls
  • rfc3164+tcp
  • rfc3164+udp
  • rfc3164+proxied-tls
  • rfc3164+<custom logproto like altp>

  UNIX domain drivers: unix-dgram(), unix-stream()

  • unix-stream
  • unix-dgram

  RFC5424 style syslog: syslog():

  • rfc5426: syslog over udp
  • rfc5425: syslog over tls
  • rfc6587: syslog over tcp
  • rfc5424+<custom logproto like altp>: syslog over a logproto plugin

  Other drivers:

  • otlp: otel() driver
  • mqtt: mqtt() driver
  • hypr-api: hypr-audit-source() driver

  $IP_PROTO: indicate the IP protocol version used to retrieve/receive the
  message. Contains either "4" to indicate IPv4 and "6" to indicate IPv6.
  (#4673)

• network() and syslog() drivers: Added ignore-validity-period as a new flag to ssl-options().

  By specifying ignore-validity-period, you can ignore the validity periods
  of certificates during the certificate validation process.
  (#4642)

• tls() in udp()/tcp()/network() and syslog() drivers: add support
  for a new http() compatible ssl-version() option. This makes the TLS
  related options for http() and other syslog-like drivers more similar. This
  requires OpenSSL 1.1.0.
  (#4682)

• cloud-auth(): Added a new plugin for drivers, which implements different cloud related authentications.

  Currently the only supported authentication is GCP's Service Account for the http() destination.

  Example config:

  http(
    cloud-auth(
      gcp(
        service-account(
          key("/path/to/service-account-key.json")
          audience("https://pubsub.googleapis.com/google.pubsub.v1.Publisher")
        )
      )
    )
  );
  

  (#4651)

• csv-parser(): allow parsing the extracted values into matches ($1, $2, $3 ...)
  by omitting the columns() parameter, which normally specifies the column
  names.
  (#4678)

• --check-startup: a new command line option for syslog-ng along with the
  existing --syntax-only. This new option will do a complete configuration
  initialization and then exit with exit code indicating the result. Since
  this also initializes things like network listeners, it will probably not
  work when there is another syslog-ng instance running in the background. The
  recommended use of this option is a dedicated config check container, as
  explained in #4592.
  (#4646)

Bugfixes

• s3: Fixed an ImportError.

  ImportError: cannot import name 'SharedBool' from 'syslogng.modules.s3.s3_object'
  (#4700)

• loki(): fixed mixing non-related label values
  (#4713)

• type hinting: Parsing and casting fractions are now done locale independently.
  (#4702)

• metrics-probe(): Fixed a crash.

  This crash occurred when a metrics-probe() instance was used in multiple source threads,
  like a network() source with multiple connections.
  (#4685)

• flags() argument to various drivers: fix a potential crash in case a flag with at least 32 characters is used.
  No such flag is defined by syslog-ng, so the only way to trigger the crash is to use an invalid configuration file.
  (#4689)

• Fix $PROTO value for transport(tls) connections, previously it was set
  to "0" while in reality these are tcp connections (e.g. "6").

  Fix how syslog-ng sets $HOST for V4-mapped addresses in case of IPv6 source
  drivers (e.g. udp6()/tcp6() or when using ip-protocol(6) for tcp()/udp()).
  Previously V4-mapped addresses would be represented as
  "::ffff:<ipv4 address>". This is not wrong per-se, but would potentially
  cause the same host to be represented in multiple ways. With the fix,
  syslog-ng would just use "<ipv4 address>" in these cases.
  (#4673)

• db-parser(): support nested match characters in @QSTRING@ pattern parser
  (#4717)

Other changes

• LogSource and LogFetcher: additional documentation was added to these
  Python classes to cover explicit source-side batching functionalities (e.g.
  the auto_close_batch attribute and the close_batch() method).
  (#4673)

• rate-limit(): Renamed the template() option to key(), which better communicates the intention.
  (#4679)

• templates: The template-escape() option now only escapes the top-level template function.

  Before syslog-ng 4.5.0 if you had embedded template functions, the template-escape(yes) setting
  escaped the output of each template function, so the parent template function received an
  already escaped string. This was never the intention of the template-escape() option.

  Although this is a breaking change, we do not except anyone having a config that is affected.
  If you have such a config, make sure to follow-up this change. If you need help with it, feel
  free to open an issue or discussion on GitHub, or contact us on the Axoflow Discord server.
  (#4666)

• loki(): The timestamp() option now supports quoted strings.

  The valid values are the following, with or without quotes, case insensitive:

  • "current"
  • "received"
  • "msg"
    (#4688)

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Credits

syslog-ng is developed as a community project, and as such it relies
on volunteers, to do the work necessarily to produce syslog-ng.

Reporting bugs, testing changes, writing code or simply providing
feedback are all important contributions, so please if you are a user
of syslog-ng, contribute.

We would like to thank the following people for their contribution:

Attila Szakacs, Balazs Scheidler, Cedric Arickx, Fabrice Fontaine,
Hofi, László Várady, Romain Tartière, Szilard Parrag, yashmathne