Syslog-ng Filter Functions with Examples

Filters are expressions that can be used to route log messages from various sources to destinations. A list of the supported filter functions can be found here.

The following functions may be used in the filter statement:

> Whereas the first problem is generated due to the fact
> the the identifier is called "user". If i call it "user_"
> it works fine.
> With the second line the problem is "auth" because
> facility(authpriv) is accepted. But why not auth?!

>From /usr/include/sys/syslog.h on my Linux box:

/* facility codes */
#define LOG_KERN        (0<<3)  /* kernel messages */
#define LOG_USER        (1<<3)  /* random user-level messages */
#define LOG_MAIL        (2<<3)  /* mail system */
#define LOG_DAEMON      (3<<3)  /* system daemons */
#define LOG_AUTH        (4<<3)  /* security/authorization messages */
#define LOG_SYSLOG      (5<<3)  /* messages generated internally by syslogd */
#define LOG_LPR         (6<<3)  /* line printer subsystem */
#define LOG_NEWS        (7<<3)  /* network news subsystem */
#define LOG_UUCP        (8<<3)  /* UUCP subsystem */
#define LOG_CRON        (9<<3)  /* clock daemon */
#define LOG_AUTHPRIV    (10<<3) /* security/authorization messages (private) */
#define LOG_FTP         (11<<3) /* ftp daemon */

Note that user, auth, and authpriv are all facility codes.  You can probably
guess the rest of the dont-call-them-that list.  Oh, and I omitted local0-local7
to save space.....
 

On Thu, 2005-05-05 at 18:01 +0200, J. Meub wrote:
> Hello,
>
> i'm new to syslog-ng and recently compiled and
> installed it (version 1.9.4) on my system (LFS, Kernel 2.6.11.7).
> The problem i have is that even with the default
> configuiration file it claims to have syntax errors.
> The lines causing the errors are:
> destination user { file("/var/log/user.log"); };
> and
> filter f_auth { facility(auth); };

I've tried this configuration file:

source s_udp { unix-stream("log" log_iw_size(5)); udp(port(2000)); internal(); };

destination d_file { file("/home/bazsi/zwa/install/syslog-ng-2.0/messages" template("/var/log/messages/$HOST/$FACILITY.log\n") log_fifo_size(10)); };
destination user { file("user.log"); };

filter f_auth { facility(auth); };

log { source(s_udp); destination(d_file); destination(user); flags(flow-control); };


It was parsed fine.

--
Bazsi
 

Using host filters we can filter information based on the host that they were created. Note that it's possible to use regular expressions in the various filters. In our setup we define 8 different categories of hosts.

#### host filters
filter f_host_loghost { host("loghost"); };  # loghost
filter f_host_wn { host("wn[0-9][0-9]"); };  # WNs (wn01,...)
filter f_host_se { host("se[0-9][0-9]"); };  # SEs(se01,...)
filter f_host_ui { host("ui01");  };         # UI
filter f_host_ce  {  host("ce01"); };        # CE
filter f_host_mon { host("mon"); };          # Mon
filter f_host_lfc { host("lfc"); };          # LFC
filter f_host_rb { host("rb"); };            # RB

Program Filters

Using Program Filters we can filter information based on the program which generated the log message. We define two filters, so we can keep all the generated output of various grid related programs in one place.

#### program filters
# grid programs
filter f_prog_grid {
       program("GRAM") or 
       program("gridinfo") or 
       program("gridftpd");
};
# edg programs
filter f_prog_edg 

Etc

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Last modified: July 28, 2019