Select Page
syslog-ng future: the path to syslog-ng 4

syslog-ng future: the path to syslog-ng 4

by | Feb 28, 2022 | plan, technology

syslog-ng 3.0.1 was released 17th February 2009, almost exactly 13 years ago. The key feature at that point was to add support for RFC5424, the new “syslog” protocol. The 3.0 release marked a significant conceptual change in syslog-ng as this was where we introduced support for generic “name-value pairs”, a means to encode application or organization specific fields (aka name-value pairs as we named them) associated with a log message.

The 3.x release train has been a long and a busy one. We are right now at 3.35.1 with 3.36.1 right around the corner. Not counting bugfix releases, that’s ~4 releases per year on average. This pace was slower initially (~1 release/year) which then increased due to all the engineering practices that we implemented in the last decade: syslog-ng is a very well tested application today, covered both in terms of unit tests and functional, end-to-end testing. In the last years, the syslog-ng project has produced 5-6 releases per year (every ~2 months), in a rolling model. Apart from features and bugfixes we also had a sharp focus on compatibility and avoiding regressions.

When I started to draft this post, I compiled a list of noteworthy features that were created since 3.0.1 in 2009. My intention with the list was to include it here to back up my previous claim that there are lot of undiscovered and under-communicated aspects of syslog-ng. However, when I finished with the list, I had to realise that even if I trim it down, it is still too long to discuss it in a blog post at one go. For now, I’ve uploaded my raw notes here. I am probably going to use that list to publish technology pieces on the blog or create a survey to map out which are the more interesting items to syslog-ng users. I don’t know yet.

This post however, is not about the past, the title says it all: it is about the path to syslog-ng 4. With the relaunch taking place, I was thinking what else could be better to symbolize a restart than a new major version? With that we can take a moment to reflect on the 3.x series and start anew with fresh energy.

It is very important to state that syslog-ng 4 is not the revolutionary, break-everything kind of release that we see too often in the software world. Rather it is an evolutionary change that will be produced similarly to previous releases, that is:

  • the release will contain both features and bugfixes
  • if a change in behaviour is unavoidable, we keep being compatible using the config version mechanism, e.g. the “@version:” tag in the front of the config file
  • compatibility with old config versions are retained long term (e.g. we are compatible back to 3.0, with compatibility back to 2.0 dropped just a couple of years ago)

But why the fuzz, you may ask, about a new version number if nothing changes and we do exactly as before?

Well, there are some plans scheduled for 4.0 (more on those later), but I consider this release to be an opportunity to set up new, long term objectives. Objectives that will cover the upcoming releases as well and not just 4.0 itself. With the launch of this blog and through interactions with the community, I already have some thoughts of my own, still, I would like to allow community members to contribute even on the strategic level. Let’s find the mission statement for syslog-ng that covers the next 10 years and then guide the project towards those goals with a step in each release. I am posting the specifics and the mechanism of this work in an upcoming post. Until that post, please continue to send me feedback (via Email, gitter.im, GitHub, Reddit, LinkedIn whatever you like), I am truly enjoying each and every one of these interactions and make an effort to respond to all your queries. Also, the syslog-ng project started to use GitHub’s discussion feature, so if you have a suggestion with regards to syslog-ng 4, feel free to submit it here.

Release management and Support

So how would the release of 4.0 happen? Is this a new branch over 3.x? How long would we support 3.x?

These are all valid questions, however the answer is simple: syslog-ng 4 is nothing more than a 3.x release in this respect. We will add features and bugfixes and compatibility will be provided using the config version feature (ie. @version). We will make no breaking changes that we cannot continue to be compatible with. There will be no separate 3.x and 4.x releases going in parallel. If we break something, fixes would be pushed out in upcoming versions (either the scheduled one or an emergency one if the problem is critical). We are confident that our current test coverage gives us a safety net that allows us to use this release strategy.

At the same time, we are scheduling some larger-scale changes that will probably not fit into a normal 8 week release cycle we do these days. We don’t want to stop doing our 3.x releases and we don’t want to publish half-baked features. So how are we going to resolve this conflict?

The regular bugfix/feature flow of 3.x will continue to operate as before. Any 4.0 related functional change will be merged to master (and thus make it into 3.x releases) but any functional change will be disabled.

Once all 4.0 related changes are merged, a 4.0.1 release will be created, effectively turning on the new behaviours, except if the user operates in `@config: 3.x` mode, which is the usual method  to tell syslog-ng to operate in compatibility mode.

All of this basically means the following:

  • the 3.x feature and bugfix flow operates as normal
  • the 4.x related changes get merged and can be evaluated if someone is interested (by using “@version: 3.255” at the top of your configuration file)
  • no half-baked functionality is exposed, even if they take longer to bake than the 8 week release cadence.
  • all protected by our testing infrastructure

Up until now, only the versioning framework was merged with some more queued for merging. Details on some of the plans for 4.0 are coming in separate posts. Stay tuned!

syslog-ng relaunch

syslog-ng relaunch

by | Jan 19, 2022 | background

syslog-ng has been around for decades: I started coding the first version of syslog-ng in September 1998, circa 24 years ago. The adoption of syslog-ng skyrocketed soon after that: people installed it in place of the traditional syslogd across the globe. It was packaged for Debian, Gentoo, SUSE and even commercial UNIXes. It became a default logging daemon in some of these Linux distributions. Commercial products started embedding it as a system component. Over the years however I feel that syslog-ng has become a trusted piece of infrastructure, few people really care about. I set out to change that.

The use of syslog-ng has become so widespread and dominant, needing minimal maintenance, that after a point, people stopped noticing its existence. It became like the printer sitting in an office corner: we know it’s there, we use it regularly, we appreciate the function but we don’t really know or care about the details or the brand providing us with given service.

I see syslog-ng regularly in this spot today: its deployment might have been a big project in its time with its own challenges, but it has been a solved problem ever since.

Not that log management and log processing would be a static, boring field of IT & IT Security. Like all other fields of enterprise IT, there’s been tremendous activity in the last 10-15 years.

Markets and relevant trends:

  • SIEM & User Behavior Analytics(LogLogic, ArcSight, QRadar, Splunk, …)
  • Big Data (Hadoop, Kafka, Storm, Spark, NiFi)
  • Enterprise SaaS services (Office365, Google Workspace, etc.)
  • Containers and orchestration (Kubernetes, OpenShift, cloud & on-prem)
  • Cloud Native Applications

All these changes naturally resulted in an equal frenzy in the tools processing and managing log data. New tools and services emerged, old tools gained new features. I could probably go on and get into details on these trends but that’s not why I am here today.

I started this blog as I wanted to show two things:

  1. That syslog-ng has not been the stoic figure in the corner and has incorporated important improvements over the years that are not widely known and unfortunately not even assumed.
  2. To solicit feedback on my future plans and with that help guide the development of syslog-ng to the future.

The intent behind this blog is to address the 2nd point.

The first point might sound a little strange at first: if there are indeed functionality in syslog-ng that its users don’t know or care about, that can only mean one of two things:

  1. Those features were not needed in the first place.
  2. The marketing/communication of syslog-ng as a project has not been very good.

As one of the engineers behind the changes I firmly believe #1 is not true. The features we added to syslog-ng over the years are important. I believe these features enable syslog-ng to address problems that only few people assume it could address. But I am not here to go into details on those features either.

My take on the marketing issue is different: other projects, open source or commercial, have been better at communicating their value propositions. They were more successful at communicating their release-by-release improvements and with that gained a more significant traction in the marketplace.

The reason behind this failure is an entire post on its own (let me know if you are interested!), my short and simple summary is a single word: focus.

I am the founder of the syslog-ng project. I founded a company that sponsored the syslog-ng project. But neither my or my company’s primary focus has ever been syslog-ng. Some of you may remember that syslog-ng was hosted on balabit.com. Balabit was a player in the Privileged Access Management space (e.g. the likes of CyberArk, BeyondTrust, e-DMZ, Wallix etc). Albeit we made an effort to combine log management with PAM, but truth be told we never really succeeded in doing so. syslog-ng grew from being my personal hobby to become the 2nd product in the Balabit portfolio.

This situation handicapped syslog-ng compared to those projects and companies that had logs as their primary focus.

Balabit was acquired 4 years ago: I spent my sabbatical, I learnt a couple of new hobbies (electronics mainly, welding is something I still want to learn), implemented home automation in my house (see http://bazsi.blogspot.com/), became a hobby angel investor and a management consultant. With all that I am somewhat bored. I love spending time with my family all these new things, but at the same time I need new challenges. There are too many “small” things I spend my time with and I have an itch to do something “bigger”.

I want to give syslog-ng a chance it never had: I want to make it my primary focus. The foundations and the technology are already there, let’s put the spotlights on, blow the dust off. Engage with users, understand their needs and communicate value. Understand things that are missing and fix them.

In a nutshell, I would like to relaunch syslog-ng as a project. Let’s reboot the process that keeps a product able to adapt to a changing market and continue to be relevant for more decades to come.

I am inviting you to be a part of it. Feedback, new use cases, feature requests and even bug reports are welcome. Strong points that you like, weak spots that you would like to see improved are very interesting.

Subscribe below and help me in this endeavour.  Stay tuned!