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syslog-ng-conf

Instantiated configuration profile for syslog-ng

Based on use of systemd instantiated services, jailkit and

Not all new features of systemd are used in service profile. It is hard to discover what systemd version does support what functionality. Some bugs in systemd chrooting were discovered in the past, thus relying on old-fashioned ExecStartPre/ExecStartPost commands and environment files instead of RootDirectory. Recommend others do the same or similar with standard chroot utility in case the service does not support chrooting internally.

Motivation

Create syslog environment with aim of security and reliability

Use of internal syslog-ng chrooting with privilege separation and Linux capabilities provide enough security guarantees. Systemd with syslog-ng configuration templating provide ease of configuration and service reliability guarantees.

Configuration should be divided to two stages global and instance-specific.

Every syslog instance should:

  • receive and process similar type of messages (network, linux, application, windows)
  • have own message processing, filtering and patterndb profiles

All instances can share:

  • global processing, filtering, tagging rules
  • SCL library modules wherever appropriate

Sources: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.service.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.unit.html# http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/instances.html https://github.com/syslog-ng/syslog-ng/blob/master/contrib/systemd/syslog-ng%40.service https://olivier.sessink.nl/jailkit/

For those who are concerned about the justification of chrooting and instance separation some vulnerability links:

Design

  • use one global "configuration package"
  • separate global and instance specific configuration snippets
  • define instance specific patterndb profile

Two sections:

  • global (shared configuration option parameters)
    • network inputs
    • standard parser chain
    • global SCL
    • templates
      • filestore
      • relay-to-relay
  • instance specific (configuration option parameters specific for particular instance)
    • patterndb profile
    • input parser chain
    • instance SCL
    • ?other message processing?

Configuration chain

syslog-ng.conf -> scl
               -> conf.d
               -> syslog-ng-`INSTANCE`.conf -> `INSTANCE`/scl
                                            -> `INSTANCE`/conf.d
                                            -> `INSTANCE`/patterndb

or the chain can be flat

syslog-ng.conf -> scl
               -> scl.conf-`INSTANCE`
               -> conf.d
               -> conf.d-`INSTANCE`
               -> syslog-ng-`INSTANCE`.conf
               -> patterndb-`INSTANCE`

Environment variables

Variable Definition path Description
LISTEN_IP/PORT /etc/default/syslog-ng@inst IP address and port to listen for syslog reception
RELAY_IP/PORT /etc/default/syslog-ng@inst IP address and port of next syslog relay host
INSTANCE /etc/default/syslog-ng@inst name of the instance, referred in configuration processing and file store templates
LOCATION /etc/default/syslog-ng@ name of the location of the syslog server, might be referred in
LOGPATH /etc/default/syslog-ng@ directory to store messages in files, every instance has own subdirectory ${LOGPATH}/%i store
BUFPATH /etc/default/syslog-ng@ same as LOGPATH for storing disk-buffer files for instance forwardings