Committed users compile syslog-ng for themselves from source. However, most of us wait until a software is available as an easy-to-install package for our operating system of choice. In this blog post, you will see an overview on the available packages for syslog-ng 4.11.0. Read more at https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-4-11-0-packaging-status syslog-ng logo

Version 4.11.0 of syslog-ng is now available. The main attraction is the brand new Kafka source, but there are many other smaller features and improvements, as well. Before you begin If you happen to use Debian, Ubuntu or the RHEL family of operating systems (RHEL, CentOS, Rocky Linux, Alma Linux, Oracle Linux, etc.) then ready-to-use packages are already available as part of the release process. For details, check the README in the syslog-ng source code repository on GitHub: https://github.

UDP log collection is a legacy feature that does not provide any security or reliability, but is still in wide use. You can improve its reliability using eBPF on Linux in recent syslog-ng versions. Support for eBPF was added to Debian packages while preparing for the 4.11.0 syslog-ng release. You can learn more about eBPF support in syslog-ng from the documentation or reading my blog at https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-4-2-extra-udp-performance Right now, packaging changes only affect the syslog-ng nightly Debian / Ubuntu packages and the syslog-ng nightly container image.

The February syslog-ng newsletter is now on-line: The syslog-ng stats-exporter() now has all functionality of syslog-ng-ctl Using the blank() filter of syslog-ng How to test the syslog-ng Kafka source by building the package yourself? It is available at https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/the-syslog-ng-insider-2026-02-stats-exporter-blank-filter-kafka-source syslog-ng logo

Reading files and monitoring directories became a lot more efficient in recent syslog-ng releases. However, it is also needed manual configuration. Version 4.11 of syslog-ng can automatically configure the optimal setting for both. Read more at https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/automatic-configuration-of-the-syslog-ng-wildcard-file-source syslog-ng logo

The syslog-ng 4.11 release is right around the corner. Thousands of automatic tests run before each new piece of source code is merged, but nothing can replace real-world hands-on tests. So help us testing Elasticsearch / OpenSearch data-streams, Kafka source, cmake fixes and much more! The development of syslog-ng is supported by thousands of automatic test cases. Nothing can enter the syslog-ng source code before all of these tests pass. In theory, I could ask my colleagues at any moment to make a release from the current state of the syslog-ng development branch once all tests pass.

While testing the latest Elasticsearch release with syslog-ng, I realized that there was already a not fully documented elasticsearch-datastream() driver. Instead of fixing the docs, I reworked the elasticsearch-http() destination to support data streams. So, what was the problem? The driver follows a different logic in multiple places than the base elasticsearch-http() destination driver. Some of the descriptions were too general, others were missing completely. You had to read the configuration file in the syslog-ng configuration library (SCL) to configure the destination properly.

Recently, one of our power users contributed OpenSearch data streams support to syslog-ng, which reminded me to also do some minimal testing on the latest OpenSearch release with syslog-ng. TL;DR: both worked just fine. Read more at https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/using-opensearch-data-streams-in-syslog-ng syslog-ng logo

The December syslog-ng newsletter is now on-line: File size-based log rotation in syslog-ng Syslog-ng release packages for RHEL & Co. Nightly syslog-ng RPM packages for RHEL & Co. It is available at https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/the-syslog-ng-insider-2025-12-logrotation-release-rpm-nightly-rpm syslog-ng logo

A long-waited feature for syslog-ng, the Kafka source, is getting ready soon. The development is still in progress, but you can already try it, and it is worth the effort. How? Using the very same tool the syslog-ng testing and release process relies on. From this blog you can learn how to download and patch syslog-ng git sources and build packages for popular RPM and DEB Linux distributions. Once you have installable packages, comes the fun part: getting the Kafka source working.