Committed users compile syslog-ng for themselves from source. However, most of us wait until a software is available as an easy-to-install package for our operating system of choice. In this blog post, you will see an overview on the available packages for syslog-ng 4.11.0.
Problem
Version 4.11.0 of syslog-ng was released on the last week of February. If you check Repology, a fantastic service providing information about software versions in various software repositories, you will see that only a very few are updated to this version: https://repology.org/project/syslog-ng/versions
The reason is quite simple: most Linux distributions freeze software versions before making a release, and stay at the given syslog-ng version while the given distro release is supported. Only “rolling” Linux distributions and FreeBSD ports are generally up to date.
Having the stability of Linux releases is good. I am pretty conservative when it comes to choosing my server and desktop OS, even if not “enterprise” level conservative (I know places running RHEL 6 still in production). However, there are situations where you want to have the latest feature of syslog-ng. In case of syslog-ng 4.11 it could be the Kafka source, OAuth2 support in HTTP and gRPC destinations, improved number parsing in PatternDB, and more.
Solution
The syslog-ng project provides ready-to-use installers for some of the most popular operating systems and architectures:
-
Debian, Ubuntu
-
RHEL and compatibles (Alma Linux, Rocky Linux, Oracle Linux, etc.)
Packages are provided not only for AMD/Intel, but for ARM as well.
You can read more about the installers in the README of the syslog-ng repo on GitHub: https://github.com/syslog-ng/syslog-ng/?tab=readme-ov-file#installation-from-binaries
Version 4.11.0 is already available in FreeBSD ports: https://www.freshports.org/sysutils/syslog-ng/ You can use the ready-to-install syslog-ng package, which comes with minimal dependencies and is good enough for the most common use cases. You can also compile syslog-ng yourself from ports, if you want some of the less used features with huge external dependencies. You can learn more about it at https://wiki.freebsd.org/Ports/sysutils/syslog-ng
Others
RHEL (and compatibles), FreeBSD, and Debian are the most used platforms for syslog-ng. Before RPM packages became automatically built with the syslog-ng release, I maintained a number of RPM repositories for Fedora/RHEL, openSUSE/SLES. I plan to retire these, but for now, all are still regularly updated: https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/overview-of-syslog-ng-rpm-repositories
If you run a different Linux distribution, you can use the syslog-ng container: https://github.com/syslog-ng/syslog-ng/?tab=readme-ov-file#installation-from-docker-image
-
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.