Dear syslog-ng users, This is the 94th issue of syslog-ng Insider, a monthly newsletter that brings you syslog-ng-related news. Topics include: Version 3.34.1 of syslog-ng available Syslog-ng updated in OpenBSD ports OpenSearch and syslog-ng Creating a new http()-based syslog-ng destination: Seq It is available at: https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/the-syslog-ng-insider-2021-09-3-34-openbsd-opensearch-http-destination

When I published my blog about openSUSE a couple of weeks ago, most questions I received in private were about the Russian students I mentioned. In that blog I quickly described how my interest in information security started, about 25 years ago. This blog gives you a bit of historical background and a few more details. Historical background It was 1995. I was studying at a university, but I was already running one of the servers of the faculty.

A couple of weeks ago editors of https://opensource.com/ sent a question to contributors: What was your first programming language? Thinking about the question brought back some nice memories about the beginnings. You can read my answer below: What was your first programming language? My first ever programming language was BASIC in the early eighties. One of my relatives bought a C64 for their kids to get started with learning computers.

Better late than never I just put online the July syslog-ng newsletter. Topics include: Sending alerts to Discord and others from syslog-ng using Apprise: blocks and Python templates Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, CentOS & syslog-ng MongoDB support improved in syslog-ng 3.32 It is available at https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/insider-2021-07-alerting-centos-alternatives-mongodb

For the past couple of months, Yash Mathne has been working on testing syslog-ng on MacOS as a GSoC (Google Summer of Code) student. He worked both on x86 and on the freshly released ARM hardware. And we have some good news here to share: while there is still room for improvement, most of syslog-ng works perfectly well on MacOS. Read my blog for some historical background and the GSoC report: https://www.

Sudo development is at version 1.9.8 beta 3. There are two major new features: sudo can intercept sub-commands and log sub-commands. In this quick teaser I introduce you to log_subcmds. I hope it is interesting enough for you to test it out and provide feedback. So, what is log_subcmds good for? There are many UNIX tools that can spawn external applications. You only see vi in the logs, but can you be sure without session recording that your admin only edits what he is supposed to?

Collecting process accounting logs on Linux with syslog-ng Process accounting logs are collected into binary log files on Linux. You can turn them into human readable format locally, using various tools. You can also use syslog-ng to read those files. Lean how syslog-ng can parse those binary logs, create name-value pairs from them and store the results from my latest blog: https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/collecting-process-accounting-logs-on-linux-with-syslog-ng

Most people only know that I work in IT. Some even call me a hacker – which I really appreciate :-) However, by university degree I am an environmental engineer (and English - Hungarian translator). Even if I never worked in my field, except for some student jobs, I still follow any news related to the environment closely. This is why I was very happy to learn, that my home city, Budapest, introduced bee pastures in the city.

Securing the sudo to sudo_logsrvd connection Using sudo_logsrvd to centrally collect sudo session recordings from your network is a huge step forward in security: users cannot delete or modify session recordings locally. However, by default, transmission of recordings is not encrypted, making it open to modifications and eavesdropping. Encrypting the connection between sudo and sudo_logsrvd can eliminate these problems. Larger environments usually either have in-house PKI tooling in place, or colleagues who know all openssl options off the top of their heads.

I love listening to music. And while I am lazy (which is the popular term for considering if something is worth the effort before doing it), I still prefer listening to it in a realistic sound quality. Which sounds like a contradiction, isn’t it? Well, yes, but only if you are not ready for compromises. In this blog, I focus on technologies and software problems, and the compromises I made to keep listening to music simple but still enjoy it.