SYSLOGD linux command manual

SYSKLOGD(8)              Linux System Administration              SYSKLOGD(8)



NAME
       sysklogd - Linux system logging utilities.

SYNOPSIS
       syslogd [ -a socket ] [ -d ] [ -f config file ] [ -h ] [ -l hostlist ]
       [ -m interval ] [ -n ] [ -p socket ] [ -r ] [ -s domainlist ] [ -v ] [
       -x ]


DESCRIPTION
       Sysklogd  provides two system utilities which provide support for sys-
       tem logging and kernel message trapping.  Support of both internet and
       unix domain sockets enables this utility package to support both local
       and remote logging.

       System logging is provided by a version of syslogd(8) derived from the
       stock  BSD  sources.   Support  for  kernel logging is provided by the
       klogd(8) utility which allows kernel logging to be conducted in either
       a standalone fashion or as a client of syslogd.

       Syslogd  provides  a  kind  of  logging that many modern programs use.
       Every logged message contains at least a time and  a  hostname  field,
       normally a program name field, too, but that depends on how trusty the
       logging program is.

       While the syslogd sources have been heavily modified a couple of notes
       are  in  order.   First  of all there has been a systematic attempt to
       insure that syslogd follows its default, standard BSD  behavior.   The
       second  important  concept  to  note  is  that this version of syslogd
       interacts transparently with the version of syslog found in the  stan-
       dard  libraries.   If a binary linked to the standard shared libraries
       fails to function correctly we would like an example of the  anomalous
       behavior.

       The  main  configuration file /etc/syslog.conf or an alternative file,
       given with the -f option, is read at startup.  Any  lines  that  begin
       with  the  hash mark (''#'') and empty lines are ignored.  If an error
       occurs during parsing the whole line is ignored.



OPTIONS
       -a socket
              Using this argument you can  specify  additional  sockets  from
              that  syslogd has to listen to.  This is needed if you're going
              to let some daemon run within a chroot() environment.  You  can
              use  up  to  19  additional sockets.  If your environment needs
              even more, you have to increase the symbol MAXFUNIX within  the
              syslogd.c  source  file.   An  example for a chroot() daemon is
              described     by     the     people     from     OpenBSD     at
              https://www.psionic.com/papers/dns.html.

       -d     Turns  on debug mode.  Using this the daemon will not proceed a
              fork(2) to set itself in the background, but opposite  to  that
              stay  in the foreground and write much debug information on the
              current tty.  See the DEBUGGING section for more information.

       -f config file
              Specify an alternative configuration file instead of  /etc/sys-
              log.conf, which is the default.

       -h     By  default  syslogd will not forward messages it receives from
              remote hosts.  Specifying this switch on the command line  will
              cause the log daemon to forward any remote messages it receives
              to forwarding hosts which have been defined.

       -l hostlist
              Specify a hostname that should be logged only with  its  simple
              hostname  and  not  the  fqdn.  Multiple hosts may be specified
              using the colon ('':'') separator.

       -m interval
              The syslogd logs  a  mark  timestamp  regularly.   The  default
              interval  between two -- MARK -- lines is 20 minutes.  This can
              be changed with this option.   Setting  the  interval  to  zero
              turns it off entirely.

       -n     Avoid  auto-backgrounding.   This  is  needed especially if the
              syslogd is started and controlled by init(8).

       -p socket
              You can specify an alternative unix domain  socket  instead  of
              /dev/log.

       -r     This  option  will  enable the facility to receive message from
              the network using an internet domain  socket  with  the  syslog
              service  (see  services(5)).  The default is to not receive any
              messages from the network.

              This option is introduced in version 1.3 of the sysklogd  pack-
              age.   Please note that the default behavior is the opposite of
              how older versions behave, so you might have to turn this on.

       -s domainlist
              Specify a domainname that should be stripped  off  before  log-
              ging.   Multiple  domains  may  be  specified  using  the colon
              ('':'') separator.  Please be advised that no  sub-domains  may
              be  specified  but  only  entire  domains.   For  example if -s
              north.de  is  specified  and  the  host  logging  resolves   to
              satu.infodrom.north.de no domain would be cut, you will have to
              specify two domains like: -s north.de:infodrom.north.de.

       -v     Print version and exit.

       -x     Disable name lookups  when  receiving  remote  messages.   This
              avoids  deadlocks  when  the  nameserver is running on the same
              machine that runs the syslog daemon.


SIGNALS
       Syslogd reacts to a set of signals.  You may easily send a  signal  to
       syslogd using the following:

              kill -SIGNAL 'cat /var/run/syslogd.pid'


       SIGHUP This  lets syslogd perform a re-initialization.  All open files
              are  closed,  the  configuration  file  (default  is  /etc/sys-
              log.conf)  will be reread and the syslog(3) facility is started
              again.

       SIGTERM
              The syslogd will die.

       SIGINT, SIGQUIT
              If debugging is enabled these are  ignored,  otherwise  syslogd
              will die.

       SIGUSR1
              Switch  debugging on/off.  This option can only be used if sys-
              logd is started with the -d debug option.

       SIGCHLD
              Wait for childs if some were born,  because  of  wall'ing  mes-
              sages.


CONFIGURATION FILE SYNTAX DIFFERENCES
       Syslogd  uses  a  slightly different syntax for its configuration file
       than the original BSD sources.  Originally all messages of a  specific
       priority and above were forwarded to the log file.

              For  example  the following line caused ALL output from daemons
              using the daemon facilities (debug is the lowest  priority,  so
              every higher will also match) to go into /usr/adm/daemons:

                   # Sample syslog.conf
                   daemon.debug             /usr/adm/daemons

       Under  the  new scheme this behavior remains the same.  The difference
       is the addition of four new specifiers, the asterisk (*) wildcard, the
       equation sign (=), the exclamation mark (!), and the minus sign (-).

       The * specifies that all messages for the specified facility are to be
       directed to the destination.  Note that this  behavior  is  degenerate
       with  specifying a priority level of debug.  Users have indicated that
       the asterisk notation is more intuitive.

       The = wildcard is used to restrict logging to the  specified  priority
       class.   This  allows,  for  example, routing only debug messages to a
       particular logging source.

              For example the following  line  in  syslog.conf  would  direct
              debug messages from all sources to the /usr/adm/debug file.

                   # Sample syslog.conf
                   *.=debug            /usr/adm/debug

       The  !  is  used to exclude logging of the specified priorities.  This
       affects all (!) possibilities of specifying priorities.

              For example the following lines would log all messages  of  the
              facility  mail  except  those  with  the  priority  info to the
              /usr/adm/mail file.  And all messages from  news.info  (includ-
              ing)   to   news.crit   (excluding)  would  be  logged  to  the
              /usr/adm/news file.

                   # Sample syslog.conf
                   mail.*;mail.!=info       /usr/adm/mail
                   news.info;news.!crit     /usr/adm/news

       You may use it intuitively as an exception specifier.  The above  men-
       tioned interpretation is simply inverted.  Doing that you may use

            mail.none
       or
            mail.!*
       or
            mail.!debug

       to  skip every message that comes with a mail facility.  There is much
       room to play with it. :-)

       The - may only be used to prefix  a  filename  if  you  want  to  omit
       sync'ing the file after every write to it.

       This  may  take some acclimatization for those individuals used to the
       pure BSD behavior but testers have indicated that this syntax is some-
       what  more  flexible  than  the BSD behavior.  Note that these changes
       should not affect standard syslog.conf(5) files.   You  must  specifi-
       cally  modify the configuration files to obtain the enhanced behavior.


SUPPORT FOR REMOTE LOGGING
       These modifications provide network support to the  syslogd  facility.
       Network  support  means  that  messages can be forwarded from one node
       running syslogd to another node running syslogd  where  they  will  be
       actually logged to a disk file.

       To  enable this you have to specify the -r option on the command line.
       The default behavior is that syslogd won't listen to the network.

       The strategy is to have syslogd listen on a  unix  domain  socket  for
       locally  generated  log messages.  This behavior will allow syslogd to
       inter-operate with the syslog found in the standard C library.  At the
       same  time  syslogd  listens  on the standard syslog port for messages
       forwarded from other hosts.  To have  this  work  correctly  the  ser-
       vices(5)  files  (typically  found  in  /etc)  must have the following
       entry:

                   syslog          514/udp

       If this entry is missing syslogd neither can receive  remote  messages
       nor  send  them, because the UDP port cant be opened.  Instead syslogd
       will die immediately, blowing out an error message.

       To cause messages to be forwarded to another host replace  the  normal
       file  line  in the syslog.conf file with the name of the host to which
       the messages is to be sent prepended with an @.

              For example, to forward ALL messages to a remote host  use  the
              following syslog.conf entry:

                   # Sample syslogd configuration file to
                   # messages to a remote host forward all.
                   *.*            @hostname

              To  forward all kernel messages to a remote host the configura-
              tion file would be as follows:

                   # Sample configuration file to forward all kernel
                   # messages to a remote host.
                   kern.*         @hostname


       If the remote hostname cannot be  resolved  at  startup,  because  the
       name-server  might not be accessible (it may be started after syslogd)
       you don't have to worry.  Syslogd will retry to resolve the  name  ten
       times  and  then  complain.   Another  possibility to avoid this is to
       place the hostname in /etc/hosts.

       With normal syslogds you would get syslog-loops if you send  out  mes-
       sages  that were received from a remote host to the same host (or more
       complicated to a third host that sends it back to the first  one,  and
       so  on).   In my domain (Infodrom Oldenburg) we accidently got one and
       our disks filled up with the same single message. :-(

       To avoid this in further times no messages that were received  from  a
       remote host are sent out to another (or the same) remote host anymore.
       If there are scenarios where this doesn't make sense, please  drop  me
       (Joey) a line.

       If  the remote host is located in the same domain as the host, syslogd
       is running on, only the simple hostname will be logged instead of  the
       whole fqdn.

       In  a  local  network you may provide a central log server to have all
       the important information kept on one machine.  If  the  network  con-
       sists  of  different  domains you don't have to complain about logging
       fully qualified names instead of simple hostnames.  You  may  want  to
       use the strip-domain feature -s of this server.  You can tell the sys-
       logd to strip off several domains other than the  one  the  server  is
       located in and only log simple hostnames.

       Using  the -l option there's also a possibility to define single hosts
       as local machines.  This, too, results in logging  only  their  simple
       hostnames and not the fqdns.

       The  UDP socket used to forward messages to remote hosts or to receive
       messages from them is only opened when  it  is  needed.   In  releases
       prior to 1.3-23 it was opened every time but not opened for reading or
       forwarding respectively.


OUTPUT TO NAMED PIPES (FIFOs)
       This version of syslogd has support for logging output to named  pipes
       (fifos).   A  fifo  or named pipe can be used as a destination for log
       messages by prepending a pipy symbol (''|'') to the name of the  file.
       This  is handy for debugging.  Note that the fifo must be created with
       the mkfifo command before syslogd is started.

              The following configuration file routes debug messages from the
              kernel to a fifo:

                   # Sample configuration to route kernel debugging
                   # messages ONLY to /usr/adm/debug which is a
                   # named pipe.
                   kern.=debug              |/usr/adm/debug


INSTALLATION CONCERNS
       There  is  probably  one  important consideration when installing this
       version of syslogd.  This version of syslogd is  dependent  on  proper
       formatting of messages by the syslog function.  The functioning of the
       syslog function in the  shared  libraries  changed  somewhere  in  the
       region  of  libc.so.4.[2-4].n.  The specific change was to null-termi-
       nate the message  before  transmitting  it  to  the  /dev/log  socket.
       Proper  functioning  of  this version of syslogd is dependent on null-
       termination of the message.

       This problem will typically manifest itself if old  statically  linked
       binaries are being used on the system.  Binaries using old versions of
       the syslog function will cause empty lines to be  logged  followed  by
       the  message with the first character in the message removed.  Relink-
       ing these binaries to newer versions of the shared libraries will cor-
       rect this problem.

       Both the syslogd(8) and the klogd(8) can either be run from init(8) or
       started as part of the rc.*  sequence.  If it is started from init the
       option  -n  must  be  set, otherwise you'll get tons of syslog daemons
       started.  This is because init(8) depends on the process ID.


SECURITY THREATS
       There is the potential for the syslogd daemon to be used as a  conduit
       for  a  denial  of  service attack.  Thanks go to John Morrison (jmor-
       riso@rflab.ee.ubc.ca) for alerting me to this potential.  A rogue pro-
       gram(mer)  could very easily flood the syslogd daemon with syslog mes-
       sages resulting in the log files consuming all the remaining space  on
       the  filesystem.  Activating logging over the inet domain sockets will
       of course expose a system to risks outside of programs or  individuals
       on the local machine.

       There are a number of methods of protecting a machine:

       1.     Implement  kernel  firewalling to limit which hosts or networks
              have access to the 514/UDP socket.

       2.     Logging can be directed to an isolated or  non-root  filesystem
              which, if filled, will not impair the machine.

       3.     The  ext2  filesystem  can  be  used which can be configured to
              limit a certain percentage of a filesystem  to  usage  by  root
              only.   NOTE that this will require syslogd to be run as a non-
              root process.  ALSO NOTE that this will prevent usage of remote
              logging  since  syslogd  will  be unable to bind to the 514/UDP
              socket.

       4.     Disabling inet domain sockets will  limit  risk  to  the  local
              machine.

       5.     Use  step 4 and if the problem persists and is not secondary to
              a rogue program/daemon get a 3.5 ft (approx. 1 meter) length of
              sucker rod* and have a chat with the user in question.

              Sucker  rod  def.  --  3/4, 7/8 or 1in. hardened steel rod, male
              threaded on each end.  Primary use in the oil industry in West-
              ern  North  Dakota  and other locations to pump 'suck' oil from
              oil wells.  Secondary uses are for the construction  of  cattle
              feed  lots  and for dealing with the occasional recalcitrant or
              belligerent individual.


DEBUGGING
       When debugging is turned on using -d option then syslogd will be  very
       verbose  by writing much of what it does on stdout.  Whenever the con-
       figuration file is reread and re-parsed you'll see a  tabular,  corre-
       sponding  to  the  internal  data structure.  This tabular consists of
       four fields:

       number This field contains a serial number  starting  by  zero.   This
              number  represents  the position in the internal data structure
              (i.e. the array).  If one number is left out then  there  might
              be an error in the corresponding line in /etc/syslog.conf.

       pattern
              This  field  is  tricky  and  represents the internal structure
              exactly.  Every column stands for a  facility  (refer  to  sys-
              log(3)).   As you can see, there are still some facilities left
              free for former use, only the left most are used.  Every  field
              in a column represents the priorities (refer to syslog(3)).

       action This  field  describes  the  particular action that takes place
              whenever a message is received that matches the pattern.  Refer
              to the syslog.conf(5) manpage for all possible actions.

       arguments
              This  field  shows  additional  arguments to the actions in the
              last field.  For file-logging this is the filename for the log-
              file; for user-logging this is a list of users; for remote log-
              ging this is the hostname of the machine to log  to;  for  con-
              sole-logging  this is the used console; for tty-logging this is
              the specified tty; wall has no additional arguments.

FILES
       /etc/syslog.conf
              Configuration file for syslogd.  See syslog.conf(5)  for  exact
              information.
       /dev/log
              The  Unix domain socket to from where local syslog messages are
              read.
       /var/run/syslogd.pid
              The file containing the process id of syslogd.

BUGS
       If an error occurs in one line the whole rule is ignored.

       Syslogd doesn't change the filemode of opened logfiles at any stage of
       process.   If  a file is created it is world readable.  If you want to
       avoid this, you have to create it and change permissions on your  own.
       This  could  be  done  in combination with rotating logfiles using the
       savelog(8) program that is shipped  in  the  smail  3.x  distribution.
       Remember that it might be a security hole if everybody is able to read
       auth.* messages as these might contain passwords.


SEE ALSO
       syslog.conf(5),  klogd(8),  logger(1),  syslog(2),   syslog(3),   ser-
       vices(5), savelog(8)


COLLABORATORS
       Syslogd  is  taken  from BSD sources, Greg Wettstein (greg@wind.enjel-
       lic.com) performed the port to Linux, Martin  Schulze  (joey@linux.de)
       fixed  some bugs and added several new features.  Klogd was originally
       written by Steve  Lord  (lord@cray.com),  Greg  Wettstein  made  major
       improvements.

       Dr. Greg Wettstein
       Enjellic Systems Development
       Oncology Research Division Computing Facility
       Roger Maris Cancer Center
       Fargo, ND
       greg@wind.enjellic.com

       Stephen Tweedie
       Department of Computer Science
       Edinburgh University, Scotland
       sct@dcs.ed.ac.uk

       Juha Virtanen
       jiivee@hut.fi

       Shane Alderton
       shane@ion.apana.org.au

       Martin Schulze
       Infodrom Oldenburg
       joey@linux.de



Version 1.3                    12 October 1998                    SYSKLOGD(8)