Welcome to the first part of my syslog-ng tutorial series. In this part, I give you a quick introduction what to expect from this series and try to define what syslog-ng is. I plan to release parts of my tutorial around every week. Of course, the Christmas holidays and the upcoming conference season may cause some delays. Each part will be released as a blog accompanied by a video. It is up to you, which version you follow.

The November syslog_ng newsletter is now on-line: Testing syslog-ng 4.0 syslog-ng Store Box federated single sign-on support via OpenID Connect (OIDC) Nightly syslog-ng container images Type support: working with sudo logs in syslog-ng 4.0 It is available at https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/the-syslog-ng-insider-2022-11-4-0-oidc-nightly-sudo syslog-ng logo

From now on, as I want to reach as many as possible, you can also read sudo and syslog-ng news from me on Mastodon. You can find my account at: https://fosstodon.org/@PCzanik Mastodon is a decentralized network of servers. I chose a server called “Fosstodon” as it is focused on open source software. Some of the projects I participate in are already there: BastilleBSD and openSUSE. As usual, next to my usual syslog-ng and sudo posts, you will also sometimes hear from me about OpenPOWER and ARM with some occasional photos from my hiking trips :-)

Each new MacOS release brings some surprises when it comes to compiling syslog-ng. MacOS Ventura has been released recently, while Homebrew has also been updated. So here are some updated instructions for MacOS Ventura (and also for the last MacOS minor release before Ventura). https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-on-macos-ventura syslog-ng logo

Once upon a time I started taking photos with a Lubitel, which is an old, very basic, and completely manual camera. In 2000 I switched from film to digital and everything could be automated. This was the time when I finally realized that having a good camera is not everything. A perfect exposure with a good camera can still result in an ugly and boring photo. Lubitel 2 When I had a fully manual film camera, I quickly learned how to do perfectly exposed photos without any tools to measure light or distance.

Once upon a time I made some time-lapse videos, but I gave up quickly. Recently I have watched yet another Attenborough nature series: The Green Planet. It was full of beautiful time-lapse recordings, and suddenly I felt the urge again to give this genre another try :-) I visited my favorite recreational area in the Pest side of Budapest: Lake Naplás. It’s an artificial lake close to the border of Budapest, which quickly turned into an important bird nesting place and a protected nature area.

One of the recurring questions at conferences was whether there is a way to check cached sudo credentials without updating them. Version 1.9.12 of sudo introduces the -N option which makes this possible, and also allows running any commands without updating the cached credentials. You can learn more about the new -N option in my latest sudo blog at https://www.sudo.ws/posts/2022/10/running-sudo-without-updating-cached-credentials/ Sudo logo

Last weekend, I visited a special audio event in Budapest. Two local companies demonstrated their products built into a single audio system. The music was played from TIDAL using an audio PC and DAC made by Bodor Audio and a pair of speakers by NCS Audio. If you read one of my earlier blogs, you know that I listen to a pair of Heed Enigma 5 speakers. It was a love at first sight during my university years.

How to get started with syslog-ng? There are two main resources: the syslog-ng documentation and the syslog-ng blogs. You should learn the concepts and basics from the documentation. The blogs document use cases and you can use the docs as a reference. syslog-ng logo Read the rest of my blog at: https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-101-how-to-get-started-with-learning-syslog-ng

Sudo is one of the most used command line tools in the Linux / UNIX / macOS world. It gives users the ability to execute commands as another user. Most often it is used to gain root (administrator) privileges. Sudo was created when there were a small number of independent large systems. Some support for multiple hosts, central management and monitoring were later added to it. These tools do their jobs, however large enterprises require ease of use, reporting and monitoring.