.\" syslog.conf - syslogd(8) configuration file -*- nroff -*- .\" Copyright (c) 1995-2009 Martin Schulze .\" Copyright (c) 2018-2019 Joachim Nilsson .\" .\" This file is part of the sysklogd package, a kernel and system log daemon. .\" .\" This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify .\" it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by .\" the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or .\" (at your option) any later version. .\" .\" This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, .\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of .\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the .\" GNU General Public License for more details. .\" .\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License .\" along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software .\" Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA. .\" .Dd Oct 30, 2019 .Dt syslog.conf 5 .Os "sysklogd (2.0)" .Sh NAME .Nm syslog.conf .Nd configuration file for syslogd .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Nm file is the main configuration file for .Xr syslogd 8 which logs system messages on UNIX like systems. This file specifies rules for logging. For special features see the .Xr syslogd 8 man page. .Pp Every rule has at least two fields, a .Em selector field and an .Em action . They may also have an .Em option field for a setting that applies only to that rule. Fields are separated by one or more spaces or tabs. A rule may be divided into several lines if the leading line ends with a single backslash ('\\') character. .Bd -literal -offset indent RULE := SELECTOR ACTION [;OPTION] SELECTOR := [SELECTOR;]facility[,facility].[!=]severity ACTION := /path/to/file |= |/path/to/named/pipe |= @remote[.host.tld][:PORT] OPTION := [OPTION,] |= RFC3164 |= RFC5424 |= rotate=SIZE:COUNT .Ed .Pp The .Em selector field specifies a pattern of facilities and priorities belonging to the specified action. The .Em action details where or what to do with the selected input. The .Em option field, which must start with the semi-colon option delimiter (';'), currently supports log formattaing and log rotation. The default log format is the traditional RFC3164 (included here for completeness), .Sy except for remote syslog targets where the BSD format (without both timestamp and hostname) is the default. The user must excplicitly set RFC3164 on a remote logging target. RFC5424 is the newest format with RFC3339 time stamps, msgid, structured data, and more. The BSD format cannot be set, it is only the default for remote targets for compatibility reasons. .Pp .Bl -tag -compact -width "RFC3164:" .It BSD: .Cm myproc[8710]: Kilroy was here. .It RFC3164: .Cm Aug 24 05:14:15 192.0.2.1 myproc[8710]: Kilroy was here. .It RFC5424: .Cm 2003-08-24T05:14:15.000003-07:00 192.0.2.1 myproc 8710 - - Kilroy was here. .El .Pp The log rotation, which is only relevant for files, details the max .Ar SIZE:COUNT a file can reach before it is rotated, and later compressed. This feature is mostly intended for embedded systems that do not want to have cron or a separate log rotate daemon. .Pp Comments, lines starting with a hash mark ('#'), and empty lines are ignored. If an error occurs during parsing the whole line is ignored. The configuration file can also include other files. The example .Pa /etc/syslog.conf has the following at the end: .Bd -literal -offset indent # # Drop your subsystem .conf file in /etc/syslog.d/ # include /etc/syslog.d/*.conf .Ed .Sh SELECTORS The selector field consists of two parts, a .Em facility and a .Em priority , separated by a period ('.'). Both parts are case insensitive and can also be specified as decimal numbers corresponding to the definitions in .Pa /usr/include/syslog.h . It is safer to use symbolic names rather than decimal numbers. Both facilities and priorities are described in .Xr syslogp 3 . The names mentioned below correspond to the similar .Ql LOG_FOO values in .Pa /usr/include/syslog.h . .Pp The .Em facility is one of the following keywords: .Bl -column "Code" "Facility" "Description" -offset indent .It Sy "Code" Ta Sy "Facility" Ta Sy "Description" .It 0 Ta kern Ta Kernel log messages .It 1 Ta user Ta User-level messages .It 2 Ta mail Ta Mail system .It 3 Ta daemon Ta General system daemons .It 4 Ta auth Ta Security/authorization messages .It 5 Ta syslog Ta Messages generated by syslogd .It 6 Ta lpr Ta Line printer subystem .It 7 Ta news Ta Network news subsystem .It 8 Ta uucp Ta UNIX-to-UNIX copy .It 9 Ta cron Ta Clock/cron daemon (BSD, Linux) .It 10 Ta authpriv Ta Security/authorization messages (private) .It 11 Ta ftp Ta FTP daemon .It 12 Ta ntp Ta NTP subsystem .It 13 Ta security Ta Log audit .It 14 Ta console Ta Log alert .It 15 Ta unused Ta Clock/cron daemon (Solaris) .It 16 Ta local0 Ta Reserved for local/system use .It 17 Ta local1 Ta Reserved for local/system use .It 18 Ta local2 Ta Reserved for local/system use .It 19 Ta local3 Ta Reserved for local/system use .It 20 Ta local4 Ta Reserved for local/system use .It 21 Ta local5 Ta Reserved for local/system use .It 22 Ta local6 Ta Reserved for local/system use .It 23 Ta local7 Ta Reserved for local/system use .El .Pp Notice, several of the above listed facilities are not supported by the standard C library (GLIBC, musl libc, or uClibc) on Linux. The .Lb libsyslog shipped with .Nm sysklogd , however, supports all the above facilities in full. Also, the keyword .Ql mark is only for internal use and should therefore not be used in applications. The .Em facility specifies the subsystem that produced the message, e.g. all mail programs log with the mail facility, .Ql LOG_MAIL , if they log using syslog. .Pp In most cases anyone can log to any facility, so we rely on convention for the correct facility to be chosen. However, generally only the kernel can log to the .Ql kern facility. This because the implementation of .Xr openlog 3 and .Xr syslog 3 in GLIBC does not allow logging to the .Ql kern facility. .Xr klogd 8 circumvents this restriction when logging to .Xr syslogd 8 by using the .Lb libsyslog .Pp The .I priority is one of the following keywords, in ascending order: .Bl -column "Code" "Facility" "Description" -offset indent .It Sy "Value" Ta Sy "Severity" Ta Sy "Description" .It 0 Ta emergency Ta System is unusable .It 1 Ta alert Ta Action must be taken immediately .It 2 Ta critical Ta Critical condtions .It 3 Ta error Ta Error conditions .It 4 Ta warning Ta Warning conditions .It 5 Ta notice Ta Normal but significal conditions .It 6 Ta info Ta Informational messages .It 7 Ta debug Ta Debug-level messages .El .Pp The default log level of most applications is .Ql notice , meaning only .Ql notice and above are forwarded to .Nm syslogd . See .Xr setlogmask 3 for more information on how to change the default log level of your application. .Pp In addition to the above mentioned facility and priority names, .Xr syslogd 8 understands the following extensions: .Pp .Bl -tag -compact -width "'none'" .It * An asterisk ('*') matches all facilities or all priorities, depending on where it is used (before or after the period). .It none The keyword .Ql none stands for no priority of the given facility. .It , Multiple facilities may be specified for a single priority pattern in one statement using the comma (',') operator to separate the facilities. You may specify as many facilities as you want. Please note that only the facility part from such a statement is taken, a priority part would be ignored. .It ; Multiple selectors may be specified for a single .Em action using the semicolon (';') separator. Selectors are processed from left to right, with each selector being able to overwrite preceding ones. Using this behavior you are able to exclude some priorities from the pattern. .It = This version of .Xr syslogd 8 has a syntax extension to the original BSD source, which makes its use more intuitive. You may precede every priority with an equation sign ('=') to specify that only this single priority should be matched, instead of the default: this priority and all higher priorities. .It ! You may also precide the priority with an exclamation mark ('!') if you want to ignore this priority and all higher priorities. You may even use both the exclamation mark and the equation sign if you want to ignore a single priority. If both extensions are used, the exclamation mark must occur before the equation sign. .El .Sh ACTIONS The action field of a rule is the destination or target for a match. It can be a file, a UNIX named pipe, the console, or a remote machine. .Ss Regular File Typically messages are logged to real files. The filename is specified with an absolute pathname. .Pp You may prefix each entry with a minus sign ('-') to avoid syncing the file after each log message. Note that you might lose information if the system crashes right after a write attempt. Nevertheless this might give you back some performance, especially if you run programs that use logging in a very verbose manner. .Ss Named Pipes This version of .Xr syslogd 8 supports logging to named pipes (FIFOs). A FIFO, or named pipe, can be used as a destination for log messages by prepending a pipe symbol ('|') to the name of the file. This can be very handy for debugging. Note that the FIFO must be created with the .Xr mkfifo 1 command before .Nm syslogd is started. .Ss Terminal and Console If the file you specified is a tty, special tty-handling is done, same with .Pa /dev/console . .Ss Remote Machine Full remote logging support is available in .Nm syslogd , i.e. to send messages to a remote syslog server, and and to receive messages from remote hosts. To forward messages to another host, prepend the hostname with the at sign ('@'). If a port number is added after a colon (':') then that port will be used as the destination port rather than the usual syslog port. .Pp This feature makes it possible to collect all syslog messages in a network on a central host. This reduces administration needs and can be really helpful when debugging distributed systems. .Pp Using a named pipe log method, messages from remote hosts can be sent to a log program. By reading log messages line by line such a program is able to sort log messages by host name or program name on the central log host. This way it is possible to split the log into separate files. .Pp By default messages to remote remote hosts were formatted in the original BSD style, without timestamp or hostname. As of .Nm syslogd v2.0 the default includes timstamp and hostname. It is also possible to enable the new RFC5424 style formatting, append ';RFC5424' after the hostname. .Ss List of Users Usually critical messages are also directed to .Ql root on that machine. You can specify a list of users that ought to receive the log message on their terminal by writing their usernames. You may specify more than one user by separating the usernames with commas (','). Only logged in users will receive the log messages. .Ss Everyone logged on Emergency messages often go to all users currently online to notify them that something strange is happening with the system. To specify this .Xr wall 1 feature use an asterisk ('*'). .Sh EXAMPLES This section lists some examples, partially from actual site setups. .Ss Catch Everything This example matches all facilities and priorities and stores everything in the file .Pa /var/log/syslog in RFC5424 format. Every time the file reaches 10 MiB it is rotated and five files in total are kept, including the non-rotated file. .Bd -literal -offset indent # Match all log messages, store in RC5424 format and rotate every 10 MiB # *.* /var/log/critical ;rotate=10M:5,RFC5424 .Ed .Ss Critical This stores all messages of priority .Ql crit in the file .Pa /var/log/critical , with the exception of any kernel messages. .Bd -literal -offset indent # Store critical stuff in critical # *.=crit;kern.none /var/log/critical .Ed .Ss Kernel This is an example of the 2nd selector overwriting part of the first one. The first selector selects kernel messages of priority .Ql info and higher. The second selector filters out kernel messages of priority .Ql error and higher. This leaves just priorities .Ql info , .Ql notice , and .Ql warning to get logged. .Bd -literal -offset indent # Kernel messages are stored in the kernel file, critical messages and # higher ones also go to another host and to the console # kern.* /var/log/kernel kern.crit @finlandia ;RFC5424 kern.crit /dev/console kern.info;kern.!err /var/log/kernel.info .Ed .Pp The first rule directs any message that has the kernel facility to the file .Pa /var/log/kernel . Recall that only the kernel itself can log to this facility. .Pp The second statement directs all kernel messages of priority .Ql crit and higher to the remote host .Ql finlandia in RFC5424 style formatting. This is useful, because if the host crashes and the disks get irreparable errors you might not be able to read the stored messages. If they're on a remote host, too, you still can try to find out the reason for the crash. .Pp The third rule directs kernel messages of priority .Ql crit and higher to the actual console, so the person who works on the machine will get them, too. .Pp The fourth line tells .Nm syslogd to save all kernel messages that come with priorities from .Ql info up to .Ql warning in the file .Pa /var/log/kernel.info . .Ss Redirecting to a TTY This directs all messages that use .Ql mail.info (in source .Ql LOG_MAIL | LOG_INFO ) to .IR /dev/tty12 , the 12th console. For example the tcpwrapper .BR tcpd (8) uses this as its default. .Bd -literal -offset indent # The tcp wrapper logs with mail.info, we display # all the connections on tty12 # mail.=info /dev/tty12 .Ed .Ss Redirecting to a file This pattern matches all messages that come with the .Ql mail facility, except for the .Ql info priority. These will be stored in the file .Pa /var/log/mail . .Bd -literal -offset indent # Write all mail related logs to a file # mail.*;mail.!=info /var/log/mail .Ed .Ss Single Priority from Two Facilities This will extract all messages that come either with .Ql mail.info or with .Ql news.info and store them in the file .Pa /var/log/info . .Bd -literal -offset indent # Log all mail.info and news.info messages to info # mail,news.=info /var/log/info .Ed .Ss Advanced Filtering, part 1 This logs all messages that come with either the .Ql info or the .Ql notice priority into the file .Pa /var/log/messages , except for all messages that use the .Ql mail facility. .Bd -literal -offset indent # Log info and notice messages to messages file # *.=info;*.=notice;\\ mail.none /var/log/messages .Ed .Ss Advanced Filtering, part 2 This statement logs all messages that come with the .Ql info priority to the file .Pa /var/log/messages . But any message with either .Ql mail or the .Ql news facility are not logged. .Bd -literal -offset indent # Log info messages to messages file # *.=info;\\ mail,news.none /var/log/messages .Ed .Ss Wall Messages This rule tells .Nm syslogd to write all emergency messages to all currently logged in users. This is the wall action. .Bd -literal -offset indent # Emergency messages will be displayed using wall # *.=emerg * .Ed .Ss Alerting Users This rule directs all messages of priority .Ql alert or higher to the terminals of the operator, i.e. of the users 'root' and 'joey', if they're logged in. .Bd -literal -offset indent # Messages of the priority alert will be directed # to the operator # *.alert root,joey .Ed .Ss Log Rotation This example logs all messages except kernel messages to the file .Pa /var/log/messages without syncing ('-') the file after each log message. When the file reaches 100 kiB it is rotated. In total are only 10 rotated files, including the main file itself and compressed files kept. The size argument takes the same modifiers as the .Xr syslogd 8 command line option, .Fl R . .Bd -literal -offset indent # Log all messages, including kernel, to messages file rotated # every 100 kB and keep up to 10 aged out and compressed files # *.*;kern.none -/var/log/messages ;rotate=100k:10 .Ed .Ss Logging to Remote Syslog Server This rule redirects all messages to one remote host called .Ql finlandia , with RFC5424 style formatting, and another remote host called .Ql sibelius , but on a non-standard port and with RFC3164 formatting (i.e., including timestamp and hostname). .Bd -literal -offset indent *.* @finlandia ;RFC5424 *.* @sibelius:5514 ;RFC3164 .Ed .Sh FILES .Bl -tag -compact -width /etc/syslog.d/*.conf .It /etc/syslog.conf Main configuration file for .Xr syslogd 8 .It /etc/syslog.d/*.conf Recommended directory for .conf snippets (per subsystem) .El .Sh BUGS The effects of multiple selectors are sometimes not intuitive. For example .Ql mail.crit,*.err will select .Ql mail facility messages at the level of .Ql err or higher, not at the level of .Ql crit or higher. .Pp Also, if you specify a selector with an exclamation mark in it, which isn't preceded by a corresponding selector without an exclamation mark, nothing will be logged. Intuitively, the selector .Ql ftp.!alert on its own will select all .Ql ftp messages with priorities less than .Ql alert . In fact it selects nothing. Similarly, .Ql ftp.!=alert might reasonably be expected to select all .Ql ftp messages other than those with priority .Ql alert , but again it selects nothing. It seems the selectors with exclamation marks in them should only be used as "filters" following selectors without exclamation marks. .Pp Finally, using a backslash to divide a line into two doesn't work if the backslash is used immediately after the end of the selector, without intermediate whitespace. .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr mkfifo 1 , .Xr sysklogd 8 , .Xr klogd 8 , .Xr logger 1 , .Xr syslog 2 , .Xr syslogp 3 . .Sh AUTHORS The system log daemon .Nm syslogd is originally taken from BSD sources and later updated with new funcitonality from .Fx and .Nx . .An -nosplit .An Greg Wettstein Aq Mt greg@wind.enjellic.com performed the initial port to Linux. .An Martin Schulze Aq Mt joey@infodrom.org fixed some bugs, added several new features and took over maintenance. .An Joachim Nilsson Aq Mt troglobit@gmail.com later picked up the aging .Nm sysklogd and gave it a home at GitHub with new features imported from .Fx and .Nx .