The December syslog-ng newsletter is now on-line: Sending logs to Panther using syslog-ng Reducing the complexity of log management Sending logs to Humio using the elasticsearch-http() destination of syslog-ng It is available at https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/the-syslog-ng-insider-2021-12-humio-log-management-panther syslog-ng logo

CentOS Stream 9 has been around for a while, but it was officially announced just a few days ago. I already tested some earlier snapshots and they had some rough edges. The current version installed without random crashes, has networking and runs smoothly. EPEL – the semi-official repository by Fedora maintainers – is already there, but practically empty, syslog-ng or it’s dependencies are not yet there. As someone asked about syslog-ng support, I had a first try at building it.

It is easy to over-complicate log management. Almost all departments in a company need to log messages for their daily activities. However, installing several different log management and analysis systems in parallel is a nightmare both from a security and an operations perspective and wastes many resources. You cannot always reduce the number of log analysis systems, but you can reduce the complexity of log management. Let me show you, how.

Each new MacOS release brings some surprises when it comes to compiling syslog-ng. Just a couple of months ago, I provided you with a couple of pointers on how to compile syslog-ng on MacOS. Since then, MacOS Monterey was released and Homebrew was updated. So, here are some updated instructions for MacOS Monterey. You can read my blog at https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-on-macos-monterey syslog-ng logo

Version 1.9 of sudo was released almost two years ago. One of the major new features was support for Python plugins. Previously, you could only extend sudo by coding in C to better suit your environment, which is not the easiest task to manage. Python makes both coding and distributing the results easier. Starting with Safeguard for Sudo 7.2, Python support is also available in a commercial sudo management solution.

Better late than never I just put online the November syslog-ng newsletter. Topics include: syslog-ng version 3.35.1 is now available Sending logs from syslog-ng store box to Splunk MacOS support Syslog-ng 3.34: MQTT destination with TLS and WebSocket support It is available at https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/the-syslog-ng-insider-2021-11-3-35-ssb-macos-mqtt-destination-updates

One of the most popular applications to feed Splunk with syslog messages is syslog-ng. However not everyone is happy to work on the command line anymore. This is where syslog-ng store box (SSB), an appliance built around syslog-ng, can help. The SSB GUI provides you not only with an easyto-use interface to configure most syslog-ng features, but also a search interface and complete log life cycle management. It can forward log messages to several destinations, recently also to Splunk’s HTTP Event Collector (HEC).

Sequence – making PatternDB creation for syslog-ng easier We are well into the 21st century, but most of the log messages still arrive in an unstructured format. For well over a decade, syslog-ng had a solution to turn unstructured messages into name-value pairs, called PatternDB. However, creating a pattern database for PatternDB from scratch is a source of major pain. Or rather, it was: sequence-rtg – a fork of the sequence log analyzer – provides a new hope!

One of the most popular syslog-ng destinations is Elasticsearch. Humio, a log management provider, supports a broad range of ingest options and interfaces, including an Elasticsearch-compatible API. Last week, Humio announced Humio Community Edition, which provides the full Humio experience for free, with some limitations on daily ingestion and retention time. I tested the Community Edition, and it works perfectly well with syslog-ng. If you come from the Humio side, you might wonder what syslog-ng is.

Panther is an open-source log management system, which is also available as a service for a time-limited trial. It is still in beta phase, but it looks promising. You can see the “beta” sign on its opening page: https://app.panther.support/ I tested the time-limited cloud service version, but you can also install it locally, either from Dockerhub, or you can build the containers locally from the source. Even if it is still in beta phase, Panther comes with detailed documentation.