program() destination options

■The syslog-ng OSE application executes program destinations through the standard system shell. If the system shell is not bash and you experience problems with the program destination, try changing the/bin/sh link to/bin/bash.

■If the external program exits, the syslog-ng OSE application automatically restarts it. However it is not recommended to launch programs for single messages, because if the message rate is high, launching several instances of an application might overload the system, resulting in Denial of Service.

■When the syslog-ng OSE application stops, it will automatically stop the external program. To avoid restarting the application when syslog-ng OSE is only reloaded, enable thekeep-alive()option in the program destination.

■Certain external applications buffer the log messages, which might cause unexpected latency and other problems. For example, if you send the log messages to an external Perl script, Perl uses a line buffer for terminal output and block buffer otherwise. You might want to disable buffering in the external application.

Example 7.14. Using the program() destination driver

The message format does not include the priority and facility values by default. To add these values, specify a template for the program destination, as shown in the following example.

destination d_prog { program("/bin/script" template("<${PRI}>${DATE} ${HOST} ${MSG}\n") ); };

7.11.1. program() destination options

This driver starts an external application or script and sends the log messages to its standard input (stdin).

Theprogram()destination has the following options:

flags()

no-multi-line, syslog-protocol Type:

empty set Default:

Description: Flags influence the behavior of the destination driver.

■ no-multi-line: Theno-multi-lineflag disables line-breaking in the messages; the entire message is converted to a single line.

■ syslog-protocol: Thesyslog-protocolflag instructs the driver to format the messages according to the new IETF syslog protocol standard (RFC5424), but without the frame header. If this flag is enabled, macros used for the message have effect only for the text of the message, the message header is formatted to the new standard. Note that this flag is not needed for thesyslog driver, and that thesyslogdriver automatically adds the frame header to the messages.

flush-lines()

Description: Specifies how many lines are flushed to a destination at a time. The syslog-ng OSE application waits for this number of lines to accumulate and sends them off in a single batch. Increasing this number increases throughput as more messages are sent in a single batch, but also increases message latency.

The syslog-ng OSE application flushes the messages if it has sentflush-lines()number of messages, or the queue became empty. If you stop or reload syslog-ng OSE or in case of network sources, the connection with the client is closed, syslog-ng OSE automatically sends the unsent messages to the destination.

For optimal performance when sending messages to an syslog-ng OSE server, make sure that the flush-lines()is smaller than the window size set using thelog-iw-size()option in the source of your server.

flush-timeout() (DEPRECATED) time in milliseconds Type:

Use global setting.

Default:

Description: This is a deprecated option. Specifies the time syslog-ng waits for lines to accumulate in its output buffer. For details, see theflush-lines()option.

frac-digits() number Type:

0 Default:

Description: The syslog-ng application can store fractions of a second in the timestamps according to the ISO8601 format. Thefrac-digits()parameter specifies the number of digits stored. The digits storing the fractions are padded by zeros if the original timestamp of the message specifies only seconds. Fractions can always be stored for the time the message was received. Note that syslog-ng can add the fractions to non-ISO8601 timestamps as well.

log-fifo-size() number Type:

Use global setting.

Default:

Description: The number of messages that the output queue can store.

keep-alive() yes or no Type:

no Default:

mark-mode()

internal|dst-idle|host-idle|periodical|none|global Accepted values:

internalfor pipe, program drivers

nonefor file, unix-dgram, unix-stream drivers globalfor syslog, tcp, udp destinations host-idlefor global option

Default:

Description: The mark-mode() option can be set for the following destination drivers: file(), program(), unix-dgram(), unix-stream(), network(), pipe(), syslog() and in global option.

■ internal: When internal mark mode is selected, internal source should be placed in the log path as this mode does not generate mark by itself at the destination. This mode only yields the mark messages from internal source. This is the mode as syslog-ng OSE 3.3 worked.MARKwill be generated by internal source if there was NO traffic on local sources:

file(),pipe(),unix-stream(),unix-dgram(),program()

■ dst-idle: Sends MARKsignal if there was NO traffic on destination drivers. MARKsignal from internal source will be dropped.

MARKsignal can be sent by the following destination drivers:network(),syslog(),program(), file(),pipe(),unix-stream(),unix-dgram().

■ host-idle: SendsMARKsignal if there was NO local message on destination drivers. For example MARKis generated even if messages were received from tcp.MARKsignal from internal source will be dropped.

MARKsignal can be sent by the following destination drivers:network(),syslog(),program(), file(),pipe(),unix-stream(),unix-dgram().

■ periodical: SendsMARKsignal perodically, regardless of traffic on destination driver.MARKsignal from internal source will be dropped.

MARKsignal can be sent by the following destination drivers:network(),syslog(),program(), file(),pipe(),unix-stream(),unix-dgram().

■ none: Destination driver drops allMARKmessages. If an explicit mark-mode() is not given to the drivers wherenoneis the default value, thennonewill be used.

■ global: Destination driver uses the global mark-mode() setting. Note that setting the global mark-mode()to global causes a syntax error in syslog-ng OSE.

program() destination options

Note

In case ofdst-idle,host-idleandperiodical;MARKmessage will not be written in the destination, if it is not open yet.

Available in syslog-ng OSE 3.4 and later.

Note that in earlier versions of syslog-ng OSE, the default for the mark-mode of theprogramdestination was none. Now it defaults to the global setting, so theprogram destination will emit a MARK message every mark-freqinterval. To avoid such messages, set themark-mode()option of the destination tonone. suppress()

seconds Type:

0 (disabled) Default:

Description: If several identical log messages would be sent to the destination without any other messages between the identical messages (for example, an application repeated an error message ten times), syslog-ng can suppress the repeated messages and send the message only once, followed by theLast message repeated n times.message. The parameter of this option specifies the number of seconds syslog-ng waits for identical messages.

template() string Type:

A format conforming to the default logfile format.

Default:

Description: Specifies a template defining the logformat to be used in the destination. Macros are described in Section 11.1.5, Macros of syslog-ng OSE (p. 265). Please note that for network destinations it might not be appropriate to change the template as it changes the on-wire format of the syslog protocol which might not be tolerated by stock syslog receivers (likesyslogdor syslog-ng itself). For network destinations make sure the receiver can cope with the custom format defined.

template-escape() yes or no Type:

no Default:

Description: Turns on escaping for the',", and backspace characters in templated output files. This is useful for generating SQL statements and quoting string contents so that parts of the log message are not interpreted as commands to the SQL server.

throttle()

Description: Sets the maximum number of messages sent to the destination per second. Use this output-rate-limiting functionality only when using large enough buffers as well to avoid the risk of losing messages. Specifying0or a lower value sets the output limit to unlimited.

time-zone()

name of the timezone, or the timezone offset Type:

unspecified Default:

Description: Convert timestamps to the timezone specified by this option. If this option is not set, then the original timezone information in the message is used. Converting the timezone changes the values of all date-related macros derived from the timestamp, for example,HOUR. For the complete list of such macros, see Section 11.1.3, Date-related macros (p. 263).

The timezone can be specified as using the name of the (for exampletime-zone("Europe/Budapest")), or as the timezone offset in +/-HH:MM format (for example+01:00). On Linux and UNIX platforms, the valid timezone names are listed under the/usr/share/zoneinfodirectory.

ts-format()

rfc3164, bsd, rfc3339, iso Type:

rfc3164 Default:

Description: Override the global timestamp format (set in the globalts-format()parameter) for the specific destination. For details, see Section ts-format() (p. 248).

7.12. pseudofile()

Thepseudofile()destination driver is a very simple driver, aimed at delivering messages to special files such as files in the/proc,/devor/sysdirectories. It opens and closes the file after each write operation, instead of keeping it open. It does not append further data. It does not support templates in the filename, and does not have a queue, processing is performed immediately as read by the source. Therefore, no loss is possible, but it takes CPU time from the source, so it is not adequate in high traffic situations.

Declaration:

pseudofile(filename options());