Thanks Balazs I managed to get things working again by reinstalling syslog-ng (3.26.1) using the default install prefix (/usr/local) BTW syslog-ng seems agnostic as to whether there is a - or an _ in the name I have tried both in the conf and both work in this version my previous practice (which I have used for years) was to use a prefix of /usr/local/syslog-ng-<version> and have a symlink in for syslog-ng in /user/local pointing to the current version. With in the real install I moved etc to dist-etc and then linked etc to /etc/syslog-ng/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Mar 31 09:02 /usr/local/syslog-ng-3.26.1/etc -> /etc/syslog-ng/ I now have the weird situation where version installed in /usr/local/syslog-ng-3.26.1/ fails but the one in /usr/local works rful011@secmgrprd02:~$ /usr/local/syslog-ng-3.26.1/sbin/syslog-ng -s -f ~/short.conf Error parsing destination statement, destination plugin elasticsearch-http not found in /home/rful011/short.conf:11:3-11:21: 6 network( transport("tcp") flags(no-multi-line) port(1514) keep-alive(yes)); 7 }; 8 9 10 destination d_elastic { 11----> elasticsearch-http( 11----> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ rful011@secmgrprd02:~$ ls -l /usr/local/syslog-ng-3.26.1/share/syslog-ng/include/scl/elasticsearch/elastic-http.conf -rw-r--r-- 1 rful011 rful011 1901 Jan 25 02:54 /usr/local/syslog-ng-3.26.1/share/syslog-ng/include/scl/elasticsearch/elastic-http.conf rful011@secmgrprd02:~$ /usr/local/sbin/syslog-ng -s -f ~/short.conf rful011@secmgrprd02:~$ rful011@secmgrprd02:~$ ls -l /usr/local/share/syslog-ng/include/scl/elasticsearch/elastic-http.conf -rw-r--r-- 1 rful011 rful011 1901 Jan 25 02:54 /usr/local/share/syslog-ng/include/scl/elasticsearch/elastic-http.conf Now comes the really weird bit. While writing this I decided to try reinstalling my original 3.21 version by simply doing a make install and this works fine! Which is really weird because that was the first thing I did after I realised things had been broken. My next step was to install 3.22 and then 3.26 in /usr/local/syslog-ng<version>. I then deleted all of them and installed 3.26.1 in /usr/local and that worked. I am happy to spend more time on this if you want to get to the bottom of this even though I have my system back. Like much of the rest of the world I am stuck at home, alone, under fairly strict lockdown so I am happy to contribute something back to the project! Russell On 2/04/2020, at 9:48 AM, Balazs Scheidler <bazsi77@gmail.com<mailto:bazsi77@gmail.com>> wrote: elasticsearch-http is provided by https://github.com/syslog-ng/syslog-ng/blob/master/scl/elasticsearch/elastic... Make sure that file is installed. Also the name of the block is using a dash, whereas you were using an underscore. I think it should be all the same as we generally convert lot of things from underscore to dashes but I would check this explicitly. On Wed, Apr 1, 2020, 20:49 Russell Fulton <r.fulton@auckland.ac.nz> wrote: On 31/03/2020, at 7:05 PM, Antal Nemes (anemes) <Antal.Nemes@oneidentity.com> wrote: Just another idea that may give a clue. If you start syslog-ng with foreground with debug and trace leve (syslog-ng -Fevdt)l, syslog-ng a couple more data points: /usr/local/syslog-ng-3.26.1/sbin/syslog-ng -Fedv -s -f ~/short.conf gives no errors and includes [2020-04-01T15:06:30.869576] Reading shared object for a candidate module; path='/usr/local/syslog-ng-3.26.1/lib/syslog-ng', fname='libhttp.so', module='http' [2020-04-01T15:06:30.871503] Registering candidate plugin; module='http', context='destination', name='http' endis with: [2020-04-01T15:06:30.892770] Starting to read include file; filename='/usr/local/syslog-ng-3.26.1/share/syslog-ng/include/scl/syslogconf/plugin.conf', depth='2' [2020-04-01T15:06:30.893592] Module loaded and initialized successfully; module='confgen' [2020-04-01T15:06:30.894031] Finishing include; filename='/usr/local/syslog-ng-3.26.1/share/syslog-ng/include/scl/syslogconf/plugin.conf', depth='2' [2020-04-01T15:06:30.894188] Finishing include; filename='/usr/local/syslog-ng-3.26.1/etc/scl.conf', depth='1' [2020-04-01T15:06:30.894717] Module loaded and initialized successfully; module='afsocket' Error parsing destination statement, destination plugin elasticsearch_http not found in /home/rful011/short.conf:11:3-11:21: 6 network( transport("tcp") flags(no-multi-line) port(1514) keep-alive(yes)); 7 }; 8 9 10 destination d_elastic { 11----> elasticsearch_http( 11----> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ and rful011@secmgrprd02:~$ /usr/local/syslog-ng/sbin/syslog-ng -V -s -f ~/short.conf syslog-ng 3 (3.26.1) Config version: 3.22 Installer-Version: 3.26.1 Revision: Compile-Date: Mar 31 2020 08:54:40 Module-Directory: /usr/local/syslog-ng-3.26.1/lib/syslog-ng Module-Path: /usr/local/syslog-ng-3.26.1/lib/syslog-ng Include-Path: /usr/local/syslog-ng-3.26.1/share/syslog-ng/include Available-Modules: add-contextual-data,affile,afprog,afsocket,afstomp,afuser,appmodel,azure-auth-header,basicfuncs,cef,confgen,cryptofuncs,csvparser,timestamp,dbparser,disk-buffer,examples,geoip2-plugin,tfgetent,graphite,hook-commands,http,json-plugin,kvformat,linux-kmsg-format,map-value-pairs,pseudofile,mod-python,snmptrapd-parser,stardate,syslogformat,system-source,tags-parser,xml Enable-Debug: off Enable-GProf: off Enable-Memtrace: off Enable-IPv6: on Enable-Spoof-Source: off Enable-TCP-Wrapper: off Enable-Linux-Caps: off Enable-Systemd: off ______________________________________________________________________________ Member info: https://lists.balabit.hu/mailman/listinfo/syslog-ng Documentation: http://www.balabit.com/support/documentation/?product=syslog-ng FAQ: http://www.balabit.com/wiki/syslog-ng-faq ______________________________________________________________________________ Member info: https://lists.balabit.hu/mailman/listinfo/syslog-ng Documentation: http://www.balabit.com/support/documentation/?product=syslog-ng FAQ: http://www.balabit.com/wiki/syslog-ng-faq