All received messages are written to stdout and/or forwarded to one or more remote logging destinations.
Supported incoming message formats are:
- Syslog RFC5424 - TCP and UDP
- Syslog RFC3164 (BSD) - TCP and UDP
- Graylog GELF - TCP and UDP (compressed & chunked)
Supported remote logging destinations are:
- Syslog (RFC5424 over UDP)
- Graylog (GELF over UDP)
- Grafana Loki (HTTP over TCP).
This software is free to use and is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.
Some of my other related projects are:
- hmci for agent-less monitoring of IBM Power servers
- svci for monitoring IBM Storage (Flashsystems / Storwize / SVC)
- sysmon for monitoring directly from host with a small Java agent
- Install the syslogd package (.deb or .rpm) from releases or build from source.
Usage: syslogd [-dhV] [--[no-]ansi] [--[no-]stdin] [--[no-]stdout] [--[no-]tcp]
[--[no-]udp] [-f=<protocol>] [-p=<num>] [--to-gelf=<uri>]
[--to-loki=<url>] [--to-syslog=<uri>]
-d, --debug Enable debugging [default: 'false'].
-f, --format=<protocol> Input format: RFC-5424, RFC-3164 or GELF [default:
RFC-3164].
-h, --help Show this help message and exit.
--[no-]ansi Output in ANSI colors [default: true].
--[no-]stdin Forward messages from stdin [default: true].
--[no-]stdout Output messages to stdout [default: true].
--[no-]tcp Listen on TCP [default: true].
--[no-]udp Listen on UDP [default: true].
-p, --port=<num> Listening port [default: 1514].
--to-gelf=<uri> Forward to Graylog <udp://host:port>.
--to-loki=<url> Forward to Grafana Loki <http://host:port>.
--to-syslog=<uri> Forward to Syslog <udp://host:port> (RFC-5424).
-V, --version Print version information and exit.
The default syslog port (514) requires you to run syslogd as root / administrator. Any port number above 1024 does not require privileges and can be selected with the -p or --port option.
Examples
Listening on a non-standard syslog port:
java -jar /path/to/syslogd-x.y.z-all.jar --port 1514
or, if installed as a deb or rpm package:
/opt/syslogd/bin/syslogd --port 1514
Forwarding messages on to another log-system on a non-standard port.
/opt/syslogd/bin/syslogd --to-syslog udp://remotehost:1514
Forwarding messages to a Graylog server in GELF format.
/opt/syslogd/bin/syslogd --to-gelf udp://remotehost:12201
Forwarding to a Grafana Loki server.
/opt/syslogd/bin/syslogd --to-loki http://remotehost:3100
Started from a tmux session, listening for syslog messages and forwarding to a remote Graylog server:
tmux new-session -d -s "syslogd" "/opt/syslogd/bin/syslogd -p 514 --to-gelf=udp://remotehost:12201"
If you don't want any output locally (only forwarding), you can use the --no-stdout
flag.
Notes
Syslog messages from AIX (and IBM Power Virtual I/O Servers) can be troublesome with some logging solutions. These can be received with syslogd and then forwarded on to your preferred logging solution.
Forwarding is currently done by making HTTP connections to the Loki API, which works fine for low volume messages, but might cause issues for large volume of messages.