Last year, we published a Prometheus exporter for syslog-ng, implemented in Python. However, syslog-ng 4.9.0 will include one that runs as part of syslog-ng. Needless to say, testing and feedback are very welcome!
Before you begin
As syslog-ng 4.9.0 is not yet released, you need to run a development snapshot of syslog-ng to test this feature. You can compile syslog-ng from source, but luckily there are many other options available as well, especially if you want to run syslog-ng on Linux or FreeBSD. I collected these in a recent blog at https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/a-call-for-testing-the-upcoming-syslog-ng-releases. You also need Prometheus. I used the version available in openSUSE Leap as a package in the distribution.
Configuring syslog-ng
Append the following configuration snippet to your syslog-ng.conf or create a new .conf file under the /etc/syslog-ng/conf.d/ directory, if your syslog-ng deployment is configured to use it.
source s_prometheus_stat {
stats-exporter(
ip("0.0.0.0")
port(8080)
stat-type("stats")
stat-query("*")
scrape-freq-limit(1)
single-instance(no)
);
};
log {
source(s_prometheus_stat);
destination { file(/var/log/scraper.log); };
};
This will open port 8080 to serve Prometheus scrapers and log requests to a file. You can find the documentation of possible parameters at https://syslog-ng.github.io/admin-guide/060_Sources/153_stats_exporter/README
Configuring Prometheus
In my case, Prometheus is running on the same host as syslog-ng, so this is what I appended to /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml
- job_name: mysngexp
# syslog-ng from localhost.
static_configs:
- targets: ['localhost:8080']
Testing
After reloading Prometheus and syslog-ng, I could see syslog-ng statistics on the Prometheus web interface and even create some basic graphs for its values.
What is next?
Please share your experiences with us! Reporting issues helps development, especially before a release. However, we are also very happy to hear positive feedback and learning that one of our long-requested features is actually used :-) You can do both at https://github.com/syslog-ng/syslog-ng/
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If you have questions or comments related to syslog-ng, do not hesitate to contact us. You can reach us by email or even chat with us. For a list of possibilities, check our GitHub page under the “Community” section at https://github.com/syslog-ng/syslog-ng. On Twitter, I am available as @PCzanik, on Mastodon as @Pczanik@fosstodon.org.