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- rsyslog for Debian
- ==================
-
- Configuration file(s)
- ---------------------
- The default configuration file for rsyslog is /etc/rsyslog.conf.
-
- Its format is based on the standard syslog.conf format. As rsyslog
- has a lot more advanced features than sysklogd, it extends this format
- with special configuration directives which all start with the '$'
- prefix. See the rsyslogd(8) and rsyslog.conf(5) man pages for further
- information or install the rsyslog-doc package which provides much
- more detailed documentation.
-
- The Debian default configuration for rsyslog uses:
-
- $IncludeConfig /etc/rsyslog.d/*.conf
-
- That means, all configuration files in /etc/rsyslog.d/ with a .conf file
- extension are read by rsyslog. This allows to easily extend the rsyslog
- configuration (either by package maintainers or local administrators).
-
-
- Command line arguments, modules and compatibility levels
- --------------------------------------------------------
- With version 3, rsyslog became much more modular. A lot of
- functionality has been moved into loadable modules, e.g. udp reception,
- which must be loaded explicitly.
- To keep compatibility with sysklogd, rsyslog introduced the concept of
- compatibility modes, which can be selected with the -c command line
- argument. E.g. with -c0, rsyslog becomes command line compatible with
- sysklogd and loads a default set of modules automatically.
-
- The default in Debian is -c3, i.e. command line arguments like -r or
- -m 0 have no effect and instead have to be configured via special
- configuration directives in rsyslog.conf.
-
- The options that are passed to rsyslog can be changed easily by
- modifying the RSYSLOGD_OPTIONS variable in /etc/default/rsyslog.
-
- If you have an existing, customized syslog.conf, it is recommended that
- you migrate your custom logging rules to rsyslog.conf or into a separate
- configuration file in /etc/rsyslog.d (in most cases it should be as
- simple as copy&paste).
-
- To read more about this topic please see
- /usr/share/doc/rsyslog-doc/html/v3compatibility.html or
- http://www.rsyslog.com/doc-v3compatibility.html.
-
-
- Log rotation
- ------------
- Rsyslog uses the logrotate(8) utilitiy to rotate the standard Debian
- log files. The configuration file can be found at
- /etc/logrotate.d/rsyslog.
-
- The rotation cycle starts with .1, as this is the logrotate default.
- In contrast to sysklogd, which starts with .0.
-
- When upgrading from sysklogd, the postinst script will automatically
- rotate the existing standard Debian log files, if it is safe to do so
- (i.e. only if .0 is newer than .1).
-
-
- Forwarding messages to sysklogd
- -------------------------------
- If you are forwarding messages from a rsyslog client to a sysklogd
- server, it can lead to doubled hostnames in the syslog message on the
- server side. The reason is a limitation in sysklogd which does not parse
- the hostname in the syslog header (as defined by RFC 3164). See Debian
- bug #514051 for more details.
-
- A simple workaround in rsyslog is, to define a custom template, which
- does not include the hostname:
-
- $template sysklogd,"<%PRI%>%TIMESTAMP% %syslogtag%%msg%"
- *.* @remote-host;sysklogd
-
- This creates a template called "sysklogd" and assigns it to the forward
- rule when logging to "remote-host".
-
-
- -- Michael Biebl <biebl@debian.org> Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:54:37 +0100
-