The syslog-ng application has been available in FreeBSD ports for many years. Recently, thanks to the hard work of the FreeBSD team, syslog-ng is also available as a ready-to-install package.
The default configuration for syslog-ng
in ports contains only the most
important dependencies. If you use a package, this is how your package is
configured. This covers the needs of most syslog-ng users. If you need a
specific feature not available with the default configuration in ports, you need
to compile syslog-ng yourself.
The following list shows the available syslog-ng and related ports in FreeBSD, by the time of writing this chapter:
- syslog-ng: the latest stable version (not necesseraly a .1 :-) )
- syslog-ng-devel: the latest development version (alpha/beta and usually .1 too...)
- syslog-ng-incubator: experimental extensions, to be used together with
syslog-ng
- syslog-ng-incubator03
- syslog-ng33
- syslog-ng34
- syslog-ng35 The numbered ports are old, but still receive at least security updates. As most people in real life, we will use the latest stable version in the rest of this document.
You can view the current list of available ports by looking into
/usr/ports/sysutils
and listing syslog-ng*
or on the web using
Freshports
None of these packages are officially supported by Balabit, but we try to help resolving problems with our best effort.
The following command will install syslog-ng
and all necessary dependencies:
pkg install syslog-ng
Note: Installation does not start syslog-ng
or enables it to start automagically.
These are the minimal steps to compile syslog-ng
from ports with features and
dependencies you need.
First change to the directory containing syslog-ng
:
cd /usr/ports/sysutils/syslog-ng
Configure it (enable features & dependencies you need):
make config
Install it:
make install
Note: Installation does not start syslog-ng
or enables it to start automagically.
Note: Please consult the FreeBSD Handbook if you are interested in handling ports and packages in more detail.
To test syslog-ng
you need to stop syslogd
first, which is bundled with the
base system:
/etc/rc.d/syslogd stop
Then start syslog-ng
:
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/syslog-ng onestart
root@fb101r:/usr/ports/sysutils/syslog-ng # logger this is a test
root@fb101r:/usr/ports/sysutils/syslog-ng # tail /var/log/messages
May 19 11:40:38 fb101r pkg-static: syslog-ng-3.6.2_4 installed
May 19 11:56:09 fb101r syslogd: exiting on signal 15
May 19 11:57:02 fb101r syslog-ng[19433]: syslog-ng starting up; version='3.6.2'
May 19 11:57:02 fb101r kernel: <118>May 19 11:56:09 fb101r syslogd: exiting on signal 15
May 19 11:57:18 fb101r root: this is a test
root@fb101r:/usr/ports/sysutils/syslog-ng #
Enable syslog-ng
to start by default with the following two lines appended
to /etc/rc.conf
:
syslogd_enable="NO"
syslog_ng_enable="YES
Note: for more information read the run first guide.
Note: for more information read the syslog-ng documentation