IMPORTANT: No additional bug fixes or documentation updates will be released for this version. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.

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Syslog input plugin

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Syslog input plugin

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Plugin version: v3.4.4
Released on: 2020-07-23
Changelog

For other versions, see the Versioned plugin docs.

Getting Help

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For questions about the plugin, open a topic in the Discuss forums. For bugs or feature requests, open an issue in Github. For the list of Elastic supported plugins, please consult the Elastic Support Matrix.

Description

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Read syslog messages as events over the network.

This input is a good choice if you already use syslog today. It is also a good choice if you want to receive logs from appliances and network devices where you cannot run your own log collector.

Of course, syslog is a very muddy term. By default, this input only supports RFC3164 syslog with some small modifications. However, some non-standard syslog formats can be read and parsed if a functional grok_pattern is provided. The date format is still only allowed to be RFC3164 style or ISO8601.

For more information see the RFC3164 page.

Note: This input will start listeners on both TCP and UDP.

Syslog Input Configuration Options

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This plugin supports the following configuration options plus the Common Options described later.

Setting	Input type	Required
`facility_labels`	array	No
`grok_pattern`	string	No
`host`	string	No
`locale`	string	No
`port`	number	No
`proxy_protocol`	boolean	No
`severity_labels`	array	No
`syslog_field`	string	No
`timezone`	string	No
`use_labels`	boolean	No

Also see Common Options for a list of options supported by all input plugins.

`facility_labels`

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Value type is array
Default value is ["kernel", "user-level", "mail", "system", "security/authorization", "syslogd", "line printer", "network news", "UUCP", "clock", "security/authorization", "FTP", "NTP", "log audit", "log alert", "clock", "local0", "local1", "local2", "local3", "local4", "local5", "local6", "local7"]

Labels for facility levels defined in RFC3164.

You can use this option to override the integer→label mapping for syslog inputs that behave differently than the RFCs.

Provide a zero-indexed array with all of your facility labels in order. If a log message contains a facility number with no corresponding entry, the facility_label is not added to the event.

`grok_pattern`

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Value type is string
Default value is "<%{POSINT:priority}>%{SYSLOGLINE}"

The default value should read and properly parse syslog lines which are fully compliant with RFC3164.

You can override this value to parse non-standard lines with a valid grok pattern which will parse the received lines. If the line is unable to be parsed, the _grokparsefailure_sysloginput tag will be added.

The grok pattern must provide a timestamp field. If the timestamp field is omitted, or is unable to be parsed as RFC3164 style or ISO8601, a _dateparsefailure tag will be added.

`host`

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Value type is string
Default value is "0.0.0.0"

The address to listen on.

`locale`

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Value type is string
There is no default value for this setting.

Specify a locale to be used for date parsing using either IETF-BCP47 or POSIX language tag. Simple examples are en,en-US for BCP47 or en_US for POSIX. If not specified, the platform default will be used.

The locale is mostly necessary to be set for parsing month names (pattern with MMM) and weekday names (pattern with EEE).

`port`

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Value type is number
Default value is 514

The port to listen on. Remember that ports less than 1024 (privileged ports) may require root to use.

`proxy_protocol`

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Value type is boolean
Default value is false

Proxy protocol support, only v1 is supported at this time http://www.haproxy.org/download/1.5/doc/proxy-protocol.txt

`severity_labels`

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Value type is array
Default value is ["Emergency", "Alert", "Critical", "Error", "Warning", "Notice", "Informational", "Debug"]

Labels for severity levels defined in RFC3164.

Provide a zero-indexed array with all of your severity labels in order. If a log message contains a severity label with no corresponding entry, the severity_label is not added to the event.

`syslog_field`

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Value type is string
Default value is "message"

Codecs process the data before the rest of the data is parsed. Some codecs, like CEF, put the syslog data into another field after pre-processing the data. Use this option in conjunction with the grok_pattern configuration to allow the syslog input plugin to fully parse the syslog data in this case.

input {
  syslog {
    port => 12345
    codec => cef
    syslog_field => "syslog"
    grok_pattern => "<%{POSINT:priority}>%{SYSLOGTIMESTAMP:timestamp} CUSTOM GROK HERE"
  }
}

`timezone`

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Value type is string
There is no default value for this setting.

Specify a time zone canonical ID to be used for date parsing. The valid IDs are listed on the [Joda.org available time zones page](http://joda-time.sourceforge.net/timezones.html). This is useful in case the time zone cannot be extracted from the value, and is not the platform default. If this is not specified the platform default will be used. Canonical ID is good as it takes care of daylight saving time for you. For example, America/Los_Angeles or Europe/Paris are valid IDs.

`use_labels`

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Value type is boolean
Default value is true

Use label parsing for severity and facility levels.

Common Options

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The following configuration options are supported by all input plugins:

Setting	Input type	Required
`add_field`	hash	No
`codec`	codec	No
`enable_metric`	boolean	No
`id`	string	No
`tags`	array	No
`type`	string	No

Details

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`add_field`

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Value type is hash
Default value is {}

Add a field to an event

`codec`

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Value type is codec
Default value is "plain"

The codec used for input data. Input codecs are a convenient method for decoding your data before it enters the input, without needing a separate filter in your Logstash pipeline.

`enable_metric`

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Value type is boolean
Default value is true

Disable or enable metric logging for this specific plugin instance by default we record all the metrics we can, but you can disable metrics collection for a specific plugin.

`id`

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Value type is string
There is no default value for this setting.

Add a unique ID to the plugin configuration. If no ID is specified, Logstash will generate one. It is strongly recommended to set this ID in your configuration. This is particularly useful when you have two or more plugins of the same type, for example, if you have 2 syslog inputs. Adding a named ID in this case will help in monitoring Logstash when using the monitoring APIs.

input {
  syslog {
    id => "my_plugin_id"
  }
}

Variable substitution in the id field only supports environment variables and does not support the use of values from the secret store.

`tags`

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Value type is array
There is no default value for this setting.

Add any number of arbitrary tags to your event.

This can help with processing later.

`type`

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Value type is string
There is no default value for this setting.

Add a type field to all events handled by this input.

Types are used mainly for filter activation.

The type is stored as part of the event itself, so you can also use the type to search for it in Kibana.

If you try to set a type on an event that already has one (for example when you send an event from a shipper to an indexer) then a new input will not override the existing type. A type set at the shipper stays with that event for its life even when sent to another Logstash server.

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