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<title>Using php-syslog-ng with rsyslog</title>
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<h1>Using php-syslog-ng with rsyslog</h1>
<P><small><i>Written by
<a href="http://www.adiscon.com/en/people/rainer-gerhards.php">Rainer
Gerhards</a> (2005-08-04)</i></small></P>
<p>Note: it has been reported that this guide is somewhat outdated. Please
use with care. Also, please note that <b>rsyslog's "native" web frontend is
<a href="http://www.phplogcon.org">phpLogCon</a></b>, which provides best integration
and a lot of extra functionality.</p>
<h2>Abstract</h2>
<p><i><b>In this paper, I describe how to use
<a href="http://www.vermeer.org/projects/php-syslog-ng">php-syslog-ng</a> with
<a href="http://www.rsyslog.com/">rsyslogd</a>. </b> Php-syslog-ng is a
popular web interface to syslog data. Its name stem from the fact that it
usually picks up its data from a database created by
<a href="http://www.balabit.com/products/syslog_ng/">syslog-ng</a> and some
helper scripts. However, there is nothing syslog-ng specific in the database.
With rsyslogd's high customizability, it is easy to write to a syslog-ng like
schema. I will tell you how to do this, enabling you to use php-syslog-ng as a
front-end for rsyslogd - or save the hassle with syslog-ng database
configuration and simply go ahead and use rsyslogd instead.</i></p>
<h2>Overall System Setup</h2>
<p>The setup is pretty straightforward. Basically, php-syslog-ng's interface to
the syslogd is the database. We use the schema that php-syslog-ng expects and
make rsyslogd write to it in its format. Because of this, php-syslog-ng does not
even know there is no syslog-ng present.</p>
<h2>Setting up the system</h2>
<p>For php-syslog-ng, you can follow its usual setup instructions. Just skip any
steps refering to configure syslog-ng. Make sure you create the database schema
in <a href="http://www.mysql.com/">MySQL</a>. As of this writing, the expected schema can be created via this script:</p>
<blockquote>
<code>CREATE DATABASE syslog<br>
!<br>
USE syslog<br>
!<br>
CREATE TABLE logs (<br>
host varchar(32) default NULL,<br>
facility varchar(10) default NULL,<br>
priority varchar(10) default NULL,<br>
level varchar(10) default NULL,<br>
tag varchar(10) default NULL,<br>
date date default NULL,<br>
time time default NULL,<br>
program varchar(15) default NULL,<br>
msg text,<br>
seq int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,<br>
PRIMARY KEY (seq),<br>
KEY host (host),<br>
KEY seq (seq),<br>
KEY program (program),<br>
KEY time (time),<br>
KEY date (date),<br>
KEY priority (priority),<br>
KEY facility (facility)<br>
) TYPE=MyISAM;</code>
</blockquote>
<p>Please note that at the time you are reading this paper, the schema might have changed.
Check for any differences. As we customize rsyslogd to the schema, it is vital
to have the correct one. If this paper is outdated,
<a href="mailto:rgerhards@adiscon.com">let me know</a> so that I can fix it.</p>
<p>Once this schema is created, we simply instruct rsyslogd to store received
data in it. I wont go into too much detail here. If you are interested in some
more details, you might find my paper "<a href="rsyslog_mysql.html">Writing
syslog messages to MySQL</a>" worth reading. For this article, we simply modify
<a href="rsyslog_conf.html">rsyslog.conf </a>so that it writes to the database.
That is easy. Just these two lines are needed:</p>
<blockquote>
<code><font color="green">$template syslog-ng,"insert into logs(host, facility, priority, tag, date,
time, msg) values ('%HOSTNAME%', %syslogfacility%, %syslogpriority%,
'%syslogtag%', '%timereported:::date-mysql%', '%timereported:::date-mysql%',
'%msg%')", SQL</font> <br>
<font color="red">*.* >mysql-server,syslog,user,pass;syslog-ng</font>
</code>
</blockquote>
<p>These are just <b>two</b> lines. I have color-coded them so that you see what
belongs together (the colors have no other meaning). The green line is the
actual SQL statement being used to take care of the syslog-ng schema. Rsyslogd
allows you to fully control the statement sent to the database. This allows you
to write to any database format, including your homegrown one (if you so desire).
Please note that there is a small inefficiency in our current usage: the
<code><font color="green">'%timereported:::date-mysql%'</font></code>
property is used for both the time and the date (if you wonder about what all
these funny characters mean, see the <a href="property_replacer.html">rsyslogd
property replacer manual</a>) . We could have extracted just the date and time
parts of the respective properties. However, this is more complicated and also
adds processing time to rsyslogd's processing (substrings must be extracted). So we take a full mysql-formatted timestamp and supply it to MySQL. The sql engine in turn
discards the unneeded part. It works pretty well. As of my understanding, the
inefficiency of discarding the unneeded part in MySQL is lower than the
effciency gain from using the full timestamp in rsyslogd. So it is most probably
the best solution.</p>
<p>Please note that rsyslogd knows two different timestamp properties: one is
timereported, used here. It is the timestamp from the message itself. Sometimes
that is a good choice, in other cases not. It depends on your environment. The other one is the timegenerated
property. This is the time when rsyslogd received the message. For obvious
reasons, that timestamp is consistent, even when your devices are in multiple
time zones or their clocks are off. However, it is not "the real thing". It's
your choice which one you prefer. If you prefer timegenerated ... simply use it
;)</p>
<p>The line in red tells rsyslogd which messages to log and where to store it.
The "*.*" selects all messages. You can use standard syslog selector line filters here if
you do not like to see everything in your database. The ">" tells
rsyslogd that a MySQL connection
must be established. Then, "mysql-server" is the name or IP address of the
server machine, "syslog" is the database name (default from the schema) and "user"
and "pass" are the logon credentials. Use a user with low privileges, insert into the
logs table is sufficient. "syslog-ng" is the template name and tells rsyslogd to
use the SQL statement shown above.</p>
<p>Once you have made the changes, all you need to do is restart
rsyslogd. Then, you should see syslog messages flow into your database - and
show up in php-syslog-ng.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<P>With minumal effort, you can use php-syslog-ng together with rsyslogd. For
those unfamiliar with syslog-ng, this configuration is probably easier to set up
then switching to syslog-ng. For existing rsyslogd users, php-syslog-ng might be a nice
add-on to their logging infrastructure.</P>
<P>Please note that the <a href="http://www.monitorware.com/en/">MonitorWare family</a> (to which rsyslog belongs) also
offers a web-interface: <a href="http://www.phplogcon.org/">phpLogCon</a>.
From my point of view, obviously, <b>phpLogCon is the more natural choice for a web interface
to be used together with rsyslog</b>. It also offers superb functionality and provides,
for example,native display of Windows event log entries.
I have set up a <a href="http://demo.phplogcon.org/">demo server</a>.,
You can have a peek at it
without installing anything.</P>
<h2>Feedback Requested</h2>
<P>I would appreciate feedback on this paper. If you have additional ideas,
comments or find bugs, please
<a href="mailto:rgerhards@adiscon.com">let me know</a>.</P>
<h2>References and Additional Material</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.vermeer.org/projects/php-syslog-ng">php-syslog-ng</a></li>
</ul>
<h2>Revision History</h2>
<ul>
<li>2005-08-04 *
<a href="http://www.adiscon.com/en/people/rainer-gerhards.php">Rainer Gerhards</a> *
initial version created</li>
</ul>
<h2>Copyright</h2>
<p>Copyright (c) 2005
<a href="http://www.adiscon.com/en/people/rainer-gerhards.php">Rainer Gerhards</a>
and <a href="http://www.adiscon.com/en/">Adiscon</a>.</p>
<p>Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under
the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later
version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections,
no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license can be
viewed at <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html">
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html</a>.</p>
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