Plain TCP Syslog Input Module

Module Name: imptcp

Available since: 4.7.3+, 5.5.8+

Author: Rainer Gerhards <rgerhards@adiscon.com>

Description:

Provides the ability to receive syslog messages via plain TCP syslog. This is a specialised input plugin tailored for high performance on Linux. It will probably not run on any other platform. Also, it does not provide TLS services. Encryption can be provided by using stunnel.

This module has no limit on the number of listeners and sessions that can be used.

Configuration Directives:

This plugin has config directives similar named as imtcp, but they all have PTCP in their name instead of just TCP. Note that only a subset of the parameters are supported.

Module Parameters:

These paramters can be used with the "module()" statement. They apply globaly to all inputs defined by the module.

Threads <number>
Number of helper worker threads to process incoming messages. These threads are utilized to pull data off the network. On a busy system, additional helper threads (but not more than there are CPUs/Cores) can help improving performance. The default value is two, which means there is a default thread count of three (the main input thread plus two helpers). No more than 16 threads can be set (if tried to, rsyslog always resorts to 16).

Input Parameters:

These parameters can be used with the "input()" statement. They apply to the input they are specified with.

AddtlFrameDelimiter <Delimiter>
This directive permits to specify an additional frame delimiter for plain tcp syslog. The industry-standard specifies using the LF character as frame delimiter. Some vendors, notable Juniper in their NetScreen products, use an invalid frame delimiter, in Juniper's case the NUL character. This directive permits to specify the ASCII value of the delimiter in question. Please note that this does not guarantee that all wrong implementations can be cured with this directive. It is not even a sure fix with all versions of NetScreen, as I suggest the NUL character is the effect of a (common) coding error and thus will probably go away at some time in the future. But for the time being, the value 0 can probably be used to make rsyslog handle NetScreen's invalid syslog/tcp framing. For additional information, see this forum thread.
If this doesn't work for you, please do not blame the rsyslog team. Instead file a bug report with Juniper!
Note that a similar, but worse, issue exists with Cisco's IOS implementation. They do not use any framing at all. This is confirmed from Cisco's side, but there seems to be very limited interest in fixing this issue. This directive can not fix the Cisco bug. That would require much more code changes, which I was unable to do so far. Full details can be found at the Cisco tcp syslog anomaly page.
SupportOctetCountedFraming <on|off>
If set to "on", the legacy octed-counted framing (similar to RFC5425 framing) is activated. This is the default and should be left unchanged until you know very well what you do. It may be useful to turn it off, if you know this framing is not used and some senders emit multi-line messages into the message stream.
ServerNotifyOnConnectionClose [on/off]
instructs imptcp to emit a message if the remote peer closes a connection.
KeepAlive <on/off>
enable of disable keep-alive packets at the tcp socket layer. The default is to disable them.
KeepAlive.Probes <number>
The number of unacknowledged probes to send before considering the connection dead and notifying the application layer. The default, 0, means that the operating system defaults are used. This has only effect if keep-alive is enabled. The functionality may not be available on all platforms.
KeepAlive.Interval <number>
The interval between subsequent keepalive probes, regardless of what the connection has exchanged in the meantime. The default, 0, means that the operating system defaults are used. This has only effect if keep-alive is enabled. The functionality may not be available on all platforms.
KeepAlive.Time <number>
The interval between the last data packet sent (simple ACKs are not considered data) and the first keepalive probe; after the connection is marked to need keepalive, this counter is not used any further. The default, 0, means that the operating system defaults are used. This has only effect if keep-alive is enabled. The functionality may not be available on all platforms.
Port <number>
Select a port to listen on
Name <name>
Sets a name for the inputname property. If no name is set "imptcp" is used by default. Setting a name is not strictly necessary, but can be useful to apply filtering based on which input the message was received from.
Ruleset <name>
Binds specified ruleset to next server defined.
Address <name>
On multi-homed machines, specifies to which local address the listerner should be bound.
defaultTZ <timezone-info>
This is an experimental parameter; details may change at any time and it may also be discoutinued without any early warning.
Permits to set a default timezone for this listener. This is useful when working with legacy syslog (RFC3164 et al) residing in different timezones. If set it will be used as timezone for all messages that do not contain timezone info. Currently, the format must be "+/-hh:mm", e.g. "-05:00", "+01:30". Other formats, including TZ names (like EST) are NOT yet supported. Note that consequently no daylight saving settings are evaluated when working with timezones. If an invalid format is used, "interesting" things can happen, among them malformed timestamps and rsyslogd segfaults. This will obviously be changed at the time this feature becomes non-experimental.
RateLimit.Interval [number] - (available since 7.3.1) specifies the rate-limiting interval in seconds. Default value is 0, which turns off rate limiting. Set it to a number of seconds (5 recommended) to activate rate-limiting.
RateLimit.Burst [number] - (available since 7.3.1) specifies the rate-limiting burst in number of messages. Default is 10,000.
compression.modemode
mode is one of "none" or "stream:always". It is the counterpart to the compression modes set in omfile. Please see it's documentation for details.

Caveats/Known Bugs:

module always binds to all interfaces

Sample:

This sets up a TCP server on port 514:

Legacy Configuration Directives:

$InputPTCPServerAddtlFrameDelimiter <Delimiter>
Equivalent to: AddTLFrameDelimiter
$InputPTCPSupportOctetCountedFraming <on|off>
Equivalent to: SupportOctetCountedFraming
$InputPTCPServerNotifyOnConnectionClose [on/off]
Equivalent to: ServerNotifyOnConnectionClose.
$InputPTCPServerKeepAlive <on/off>
Equivalent to: KeepAlive
$InputPTCPServerKeepAlive_probes <number>
Equivalent to: KeepAlive.Probes
$InputPTCPServerKeepAlive_intvl <number>
Equivalent to: KeepAlive.Interval
$InputPTCPServerKeepAlive_time <number>
Equivalent to: KeepAlive.Time
$InputPTCPServerRun <port>
Equivalent to: Port
$InputPTCPServerInputName <name>
Equivalent to: Name
$InputPTCPServerBindRuleset <name>
Equivalent to: Ruleset
$InputPTCPServerHelperThreads <number>
Equivalent to: threads
$InputPTCPServerListenIP <name>
Equivalent to: Address

Caveats/Known Bugs:

module always binds to all interfaces

Sample:

This sets up a TCP server on port 514:

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