Hi,

You are right. This was a bug in 3.38 which was fixed in PR #4158, which has already been merged to master, and I was testing with the current master and not 3.38.1

Even though I did that PR, I forgot we merged a fix for this already.

With the current master the same is like this:

$ bin/pdbtool test --validate sample.pdb
WARNING: the template specified in value()/<value> options for your grouping-by() or db-parser() configuration has been changed to support typing from syslog-ng 4.0. You are using an older config version and your template contains an unrecognized type-cast, probably a parenthesis in the value field. This will be interpreted in the `type(value)' format in future versions. Please add an explicit string() cast as shown in the 'fixed-value' tag of this log message or remove the parenthesis. The value will be processed as a 'string' expression; config-version='3.38', name='AUTHPROGRAM', value='su(pam_unix)', fixed-value='string(su(pam_unix))'
$ echo $?
0

The issue is that with the release of v4.0 (which we started to prepare for), this would become an error in earnest, as pdbtool does not allow you to specify the config version and uses the syslog-ng version number by default. And I don't see too much value in extending pdbtool in this direction, as having to add an explicit config version number to pdbtool when using it is not very intuitive.

The PR I mentioned in my previous email (#4222) improves this further by checking the pdb version field (in the topmost <patterndb> tag) and uses string based values if it's below v6.

What I am thinking about is whether to revert to using an attribute to specify the type, e.g.

We would default to using a string. The only downside is that add-contextual-data() uses the parenthesis based format in a CSV file and I can't extend the CSV format as easily as XML.

So by changing to the use of an attribute types would mean we have different syntaxes for these use-cases where one can use typed templates:

- config file anywhere: `type(value)`

- add-contextual-data, 3rd column in the CSV file: `type(value)`

- db-parser(): `<value name="foo" type="whatever"/>`

On Tue, Nov 22, 2022 at 3:14 PM Evan Rempel <erempel@uvic.ca> wrote:

I'm not sure if you still think this is only a warning.

[xerr@pangolin etc]$ rpm -q syslog-ng
syslog-ng-3.38.1-1.el8.x86_64

[xerr@pangolin etc]$ rpm -qi syslog-ng
Name        : syslog-ng
Version     : 3.38.1
Release     : 1.el8
Architecture: x86_64
Install Date: Thu 03 Nov 2022 04:08:02 AM PDT
Group       : System Environment/Daemons
Size        : 3651296
License     : GPLv2+
Signature   : RSA/SHA256, Mon 03 Oct 2022 03:00:51 AM PDT, Key ID c96af856c87e88fe
Source RPM : syslog-ng-3.38.1-1.el8.src.rpm
Build Date : Mon 03 Oct 2022 03:00:39 AM PDT
Build Host : copr-hv-x86-64-01-prod-02441780-20221003-095224
Relocations : (not relocatable)
Vendor      : Fedora Copr - user czanik
URL         : http://www.balabit.com/network-security/syslog-ng
Summary     : Next-generation syslog server

A very small patterndb

<patterndb version="4" pub_date="2009-09-01">
<ruleset name="su(pam_unix)" id="RS-d2fae001-a7f6-4e39-ae62-5658906fe48c">
    <pattern>su_pam_unix_</pattern>
    <rules>
      <rule id="unmatched-program-su(pam_unix)" class="unknown" provider="UVic">
        <patterns>
           <pattern>@ANYSTRING@</pattern>
        </patterns>
        <values>
           <value name="AUTHPROGRAM">su(pam_unix)</value>
        </values>
      </rule>
    </rules>
</ruleset>
</patterndb>

[xerr@pangolin etc]$ /usr/bin/pdbtool test --validate test.xml
Error parsing pattern database file; filename='test.xml', error='test.xml:10:51: Error compiling value template, rule=unmatched-program-su(pam_unix), name=AUTHPROGRAM, value=su(pam_unix), error=Unknown type specified in type hinting: su'

Evan.

On 2022-11-22 01:39, Balazs Scheidler wrote:

I only got warnings and not errors, when trying to use this in my XML file:

<value name="seq-matches">su(pam_unix)</value>

how did you execute syslog-ng so you got the error above? The only case where this is an error, if you are using "@version: 4.0"

This was the warning produced (both by syslog-ng and pdbtool):

WARNING: the template specified in value()/<value> options for your grouping-by() or db-parser() configuration has been changed to support typing from syslog-ng 4.0. You are using an older config version and your template contains an unrecognized type-cast, probably a parenthesis in the value field. This will be interpreted in the `type(value)' format in future versions. Please add an explicit string() cast as shown in the 'fixed-value' tag of this log message or remove the parenthesis. The value will be processed as a 'string' expression; config-version='3.38', name='seq-matches', value='su(pam_unix)', fixed-value='string(su(pam_unix))'

I chose to embed the type-hint field in the body of the <value> tag, as this is the format that is used everywhere else. I might be able to bump the db-parser XML file version, in the file header:

<patterndb version='5'>

I could bump this up to version 6, in which case you'd only need to add the type-hint if you also bumped the version number. That I think is doable.

On the documentation front, there's an XML schema in the source tree under the doc/xsd/ directory for each version of patterndb, and I assume the documentation also has a chapter on the db-parser() format.

On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 5:22 PM Evan Rempel <erempel@uvic.ca> wrote:

We have a patterndb file that contains both patterns and values with
fixed text that include a strings of the form "xxxx (yyy)" which now can
not be loaded by the patterndb.

Syslog-ng throws the error

Error parsing pattern database file; ... Error compiling value template,
rule=FLARE-3543, name=AUTHPROGRAM, value=su(pam_unix), error=Unknown
type specified in type hinting: su'

I have not enabled the version 4.0 testing of type hinting. The version
configuration is

@version: 3.36

I am unable to find documentation for the full syntax of the patterndb
file (seems to have been lost from the docs since perhaps 3.16?)

Is there a patterndb syntax specification document?

I would expect that even when type hinting is enabled in the patterndb
file, given that it is an XML document, that the type hinting would be
part of the XML tag metadata, rather than part of the XML static data.

--
Evan

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