Remote Logging (Forward Syslog messages)

Syslog

syslog is a standard for message logging. it allows separation between the software that generates log messages, system that stores them and the the software that reports and analyze them (wikipedia).

syslog is the main logging facility in most Operating systems including GNU/Linux, BSDs and Mac Os, so we decided to use syslog as our log storage service for PantherX.

by default, GuixSD configured syslog to log anything (except mail) of level info or higher to /var/log/messages. if we need debug level logs as well, we should access /var/log/debug file. all mail related logs are also stored in /var/log/maillog.

Forward Log messages

You can forward the log messeges with configuring the syslog server. Generally, there are syslog, rsyslog and syslog-ng as syslog daemons. So for remote logging you can:

1. rsyslog: As root, edit /etc/rsyslog.conf with a text editor. Paste this line at the end:

*.*    @logs.papertrailapp.com:46169

1. syslog-ng: As root, edit /etc/syslog-ng.conf with a text editor. Find a line starting with source. For example: source s_sys { .. }. At the end of the file, paste this. Replace s_sys with the source name above, like “s_sys”, “src”, “s_all”, or “s_local”:

destination d_papertrail {
  udp("logs.papertrailapp.com" port(46169));
};

# replace "s_sys" with the name you found:
log {
  source(s_sys); destination(d_papertrail);
};

1. syslog: A few Linux distributions still used GNU syslogd until recently. Since GNU syslogd can only transmit logs to the default syslog port (and not to a port of your choosing), you can use remote_syslog2. It’s packaged and also is working as a service in PantherX. You can install and run it manually, or configure your system to run it as a service:

   (service remote-syslog-service-type)

You can also configure the remote-syslog. There are destination-host, destination-port, hostname, log-files and package parameters while they filled with these default values:

(define-record-type* <remote-syslog-service-configuration>
  remote-syslog-service-configuration make-remote-syslog-service-configuration
  remote-syslog-service-configuration?
  (destionation-host  remote-syslog-service-configuration-destionation-host
          (default "logs.papertrailapp.com"))
  (destionation-port  remote-syslog-service-configuration-destionation-port
          (default "46169"))
  (hostname           remote-syslog-service-configuration-host
          (default "$(hostname)"))
  (log-files          remote-syslog-service-configuration-log-files
          (default "/var/log/messages"))
  (package            remote-syslog-service-configuration-package
          (default remote_syslog2)))

Therefor, if your want, you can change these values in the configuration, ex:

   (service remote-syslog-service-type
                (remote-syslog-service-configuration
                  (destination-host "blob.blob.com")
                  (destination-port "1234")
                  (hostname "MY_SYSTEM")))