rsyslog 1.12.3 review

Rsyslog is a FREE software, GPL lincesed enhanced syslogd

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 197K Developer: Rainer Gerhards

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Rsyslog is a FREE software, GPL lincesed enhanced syslogd. Among others, it offers support for MySQL and fully configurable output formats (including great timestamps). Rsyslog was initiated by Rainer Gerhards. It has been forked from the sysklogd standard package.

The goal of the rsyslog project is to provide a more configurable and reliable syslog deamon. By "reliable", we mean support for reliable transmission modes like TCP or RFC 3195 (syslog-reliable). We do NOT imply that the sysklogd package is unreliable.

In fact, the opposite is the case and we assume that for the time being the well-used sysklogd package offers better program reliability than our brand-new modifications to it.

The name "rsyslog" stems back to the planned support for syslog-reliable. Ironically, the initial release of rsyslog does NEITHER support syslog-reliable NOR tcp based syslog. Instead, it contains enhanced configurability and other enhancements (like database support).

The reason for this is that full support for RFC 3195 would require even more changes and especially fundamental architectural changes. Also, questions asked on the loganalysis list and at other places indicated that RFC3195 is NOT a prime priority for users, but rather better control over the output format.

So here we are, with a rsyslod that covers a lot of enhancements, but not a single one of these that made its name ;)

The next enhancement scheduled is support for the new syslog-protocol internet draft format, not the least to see how easy/complicated it is to implement. We already know that some subleties of syslog-protocol will require at least one considerable architectural change to the syslogd and this might delay things a little.

Our immediate goal is to receive feedback and get the bugs out of the current release. Only after that we intend to advance the code and introduce new features.

What's New in This Release:
This release adds improvements to the property replacer, better support for Fedora, incomplete support for Solaris, documentation for known packager locations, and bugfixes.