Wow. Sam Altman did something fantastic. He motivated me. I’m using my AI workstation to work on Linux and experiment with AI! Last winter I bought a new machine to edit my photos and learn AI on Linux. I’m still doing the photo editing part, but not the AI part. I wanted to keep going, but with my new work responsibilities I was too tired to spend energy on Learning. However, the statement about RAM by Sam Altman turned out to be a good motivation.

Version 4.13 of syslog-ng is expected to be released in the coming weeks. There are fixes and enhancements even in the core of syslog-ng. Testing of the latest nightly builds is much appreciated. Thousands of automatic tests check each source code change before they are merged. Still, nothing can replace some manual testing with real-world configurations. Syslog-ng runs on a wide variety of systems, from RHEL 8 to Fedora Rawhide, FreeBSD, MacOS and others.

One of the core dependencies of syslog-ng is the ivykis library. We have a few FreeBSD specific fixes in our ivykis fork, however the syslog-ng port uses ivykis from ports instead of the bundled version. I am now working on making it selectable. Testing and help are welcome. Read more at https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/building-syslog-ng-with-bundled-ivykis-on-freebsd syslog-ng logo

Last Sunday I spent my day at the third Audio Expo in Budapest. Yet again it was fantastic. And yet again, my favorite audio experience was in the NCS Audio room, even if I listened to lot more expensive systems. TL;DR: Made in Hungary audio rivals the rest of the world in quality, while often being available at a much more affordable price. My favorite of the show was the NCS Audio / Qualiton / Pixel cables room, all made in Hungary.

Does syslog-ng support the latest OpenSearch version? I suspected that the answer was yes, but I gave it a try anyway. And as expected, starting to use OpenSearch 3.9 with syslog-ng is a smooth experience. My only problem? Finding a password complex enough for OpenSearch. Read more at https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/using-syslog-ng-with-opensearch-3-9 syslog-ng logo

Two years ago, I created a syslog-ng repo for Amazon Linux 2023. As I received zero feedback, I left it alone until last week. The repo is now updated to the latest version of syslog-ng: 4.12. According to Fedora Copr download stats, my Amazon Linux 2023 repo has many downloads. However, for over two years, I received zero feedback from the community, no matter how many GitHub, e-mail or social media posts I used to ask users about their experiences and requirements.

Dear syslog-ng users, This is the 141st issue of syslog-ng Insider, a monthly newsletter that brings you syslog-ng-related news. New performance tuning possibilities in syslog-ng On April’s fool’s day, I shared that syslog-ng can reach 7 million EPS. This test lab result was in part possible thanks to a few performance enhancements coming to syslog-ng version 4.12. How 7 million EPS is possible? Before diving deeper, let me repeat it: 7 million EPS is just a lab testing result, not (yet) possible in the real world.

Recently, I heard complaints within the syslog-ng community that using Elasticsearch is not that easy anymore. I installed Elasticsearch 9.5 with Kibana to verify these claims. Read more at https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/using-syslog-ng-with-elasticsearch-9-5 syslog-ng logo

Most of August, I was on vacation, but now I’m back and I try catching up on the events of the past weeks, just like my colleagues do. Currently, we are fixing issues and reviewing contributions, but we also discussed scaling back our efforts on Java support. While most of the team was away on vacation, the number of syslog-ng contributions suddenly grew. We support both autotools and cmake, and while differences are narrowing, there are still some minor problems to fix.

For many years, I didn’t think that Tor could be useful for me. However, I’ve recently found a Gist on GitHub that describes how you can use it to harden your central syslog-ng server. And while I have yet to try it, at least now I have a reason to actually test Tor. The Tor website describes the project as follows: “Protect yourself against tracking, surveillance, and censorship.” I live in a country where thankfully I do not need these, nor do I perform any activities for which Tor would be useful.