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.

A month ago, when sudo 1.9.8 was still under development, we checked out the new log_subcmds option. It allows you log all commands (with some limitations) that are executed by a command started through sudo. For example, you can see if a shell was started through a text editor. The intercept option brings this one step further: you can prevent sub-commands from even running. Read the rest of my blog at https://blog.

Version 3.33 of syslog-ng arrived with basic MQTT support. Version 3.34 has added many important features to it: user authentication, TLS support and WebSocket support. These features give you both security and flexibility while sending log messages to an MQTT broker. This blog helps you to make your first steps securing your MQTT connection: https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-3-34-mqtt-destination-with-tls-and-websocket-support

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

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?