Dear syslog-ng users, This is the 12th issue of the syslog-ng Insider, a monthly newsletter that brings you syslog-ng related news. Your feedback and news tips about the next issue is welcome at documentation@balabit.com <mailto:documentation@balabit.com> FEATURED NEWS GSoC wants you to code syslog-ng in the summer ---------------------------------------------- GSoC ( http://code.google.com/soc/ ) is a nice opportunity for higher education students to spend their summers productively by coding in open source software projects. This time BalaBit participates in GSoC with the help of the openSUSE project. If you are interested in enhancing syslog-ng or Zorp, please see our project ideas on the openSUSE ideas page: http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:GSOC_ideas#syslog-ng and http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:GSOC_ideas#Zorp Alpha1 of syslog-ng 3.4 is released ----------------------------------- The first alpha version of syslog-ng 3.4 is released. Major new features are junctions & channels which add even more flexibility to the syslog-ng configuration. There is now also a json parser, smtp destination and modules are now loaded automatically. For more details on what is new, please check Bazsi's blog: http://bazsi.blogs.balabit.com/2012/03/first-alpha-release-of-syslog-ng-3-4-... Instead of using the release, it is recommended to use sources from git, which have some major stability fixes: https://github.com/bazsi/syslog-ng-3.4 If you intend to package syslog-ng 3.4, it's recommended to check the mailing list for patches from Algernon, which make packaging easier. A snapshot of his work is available at: http://packages.madhouse-project.org/syslog-ng/algernon/3.4/syslog-ng-algern... There are already packages for openSUSE and an updated syslog-ng-devel port for FreeBSD. See http://www.balabit.com/network-security/syslog-ng/opensource-logging-system/... The (r)evolution of name value pairs ------------------------------------ Name value pairs were at the heart of syslog-ng even before PatternDB made it obvious. And now the CEE board and the Lumberjack project also push into this direction: instead of free form text messages, use name value pairs for logging. Recent developments in syslog-ng also serve this purpose: v3.3 can output name value pairs in JSON and v3.4 will be able to parse these logs and turn them into name value pairs again. How project Lumberjack can improve logging: http://bazsi.blogs.balabit.com/2012/02/project-lumberjack-to-improve-linux-l... How syslog-ng can be used for CEE (JSON) logs: http://algernon.blogs.balabit.com/2012/02/cee-handling-with-syslog-ng/ How using name value pairs can improve logging: http://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/2012/03/state-of-the-art-logging-syslog-ng-j... which is also the basis for our syslog-ng presentation at the LOADays conference: http://loadays.org/ syslog-ng community forum ------------------------- BalaBit has had a very positive experience with the syslog-ng community and we believe that your feedback has played a key role in the success of syslog-ng. We have decided to adopt this community model to our other products so that we can have our customers involved in product design. It could be interesting for you to visit this brand new community site at http://communities.balabit.com <http://communities.balabit.com/>. You are one of the first of our friends to be invited. OTHER SHORT NEWS * An introduction to RLTP, a protocol to make syslog-ng PE even more reliable: http://pzolee.blogs.balabit.com/2012/03/zero-message-loss-with-syslog-ng-pro... * The libumberlog library is a thin, LD_PRELOAD-able layer on top of the legacy syslog() function, that turns those calls into something that emits its message part as a JSON formatted structured log message:http://algernon.github.com/libumberlog/ * ELSA, the high performance web GUI for syslog-ng, received a few interesting updates to make resolving security incidents even more quick and efficient. For the latest examples check: http://ossectools.blogspot.com/ NEW RELEASES: * syslog-ng OSE 3.4 alpha1: http://bazsi.blogs.balabit.com/2012/03/first-alpha-release-of-syslog-ng-3-4-... * syslog-ng PE 4F2: http://andrea.blogs.balabit.com/2012/02/balabits-new-syslog-ng-premium-editi... * lumberlog 0.1.0: http://algernon.github.com/libumberlog/ ARCHIVE http://insider.blogs.balabit.com/ -- Peter Czanik (CzP)<czanik@balabit.hu> BalaBit IT Security / syslog-ng upstream http://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/