Hi Thanks to various folks I managed to build 3.7b2 with json. I am now trying to convert my ELSA config to produce a parsed output in json that I can feed into Elastic Search. Having failed to make my full config work (I had to try ;) so I tried a basic one based on https://www.balabit.com/sites/default/files/documents/syslog-ng-ose-latest-g... [ Aside: minor syntax error on this page — lnside log {} you can not name parser elements ] here is my conf: @version: 3.7 source s_json { network(port(1514) flags(no-parse)); }; destination d_json { file("/data/russell/test.json” template("$(format-json --scope dot-nv-pairs)\n")); }; log { source(s_json); parser { json-parser (prefix(".json.")); }; destination(d_json); }; I get no output and ‘stats’ shows: [rful011@secmgrprd01 ~]$ sudo /usr/local/syslog-ng/sbin/syslog-ng-ctl stats SourceName;SourceId;SourceInstance;State;Type;Number src.none;;;a;processed;0 src.none;;;a;stamp;0 source;s_json;;a;processed;19375 global;payload_reallocs;;a;processed;25710 global;msg_clones;;a;processed;0 destination;d_json;;a;processed;0 center;;queued;a;processed;0 global;sdata_updates;;a;processed;0 center;;received;a;processed;19375 global;internal_queue_length;;a;processed;19378 Which is the same as I get with my full config with lots of patterns. As usual am missing something basic!