Remote Syslog Sender

This gem is syslog sender that is extracted from papertrail/remote_syslog_logger

This can send message to remote syslog server via UDP, TCP, TCP+TLS. (Original does not support TCP, TCP+TLS protocol).

Installation

The easiest way to install remote_syslog_sender is with Bundler. Add remote_syslog_sender to your Gemfile.

If you are not using a Gemfile, run:

$ [sudo] gem install remote_syslog_sender

Usage

sender = RemoteSyslogSender.new('syslog.domain.com', 514) # default protocol is UDP
sender.transmit("message body")
# or 
sender.write("message body")


## TCP
sender = RemoteSyslogSender.new('syslog.domain.com', 514, protocol: :tcp)
sender.transmit("message body")

## TCP+TLS
sender = RemoteSyslogSender.new('syslog.domain.com', 514, protocol: :tcp, tls: true, ca_file: "custom_ca.pem")
sender.transmit("message body")

To point the logs to your local system, use localhost and ensure that the system's syslog daemon is bound to 127.0.0.1.

Limitations

If the specified host cannot be resolved, syslog.domain.com in the example under the usage section above, remote_syslog_sender will block for approximately 20 seconds before displaying an error. This could result in the application failing to start or even stopping responding.

Workarounds for this include:

• use an IP address instead of a hostname.
• put a hosts entry in /etc/hosts or equivalent, so that DNS is not actually consulted
• instead of logging directly to the network, write to a file and transmit new entries with a standalone daemon like remote_syslog,

Message length

All log lines are truncated to a maximum of 1024 characters. This restriction comes from RFC 3164 section 4.1:

The total length of the packet MUST be 1024 bytes or less.

Additionally, the generally-accepted MTU of the Internet is 1500 bytes, so regardless of the RFC, UDP syslog packets longer than 1500 bytes would not arrive. For details or to use TCP syslog for longer messages, see help.papertrailapp.com.

Default program name

By default, the program value is set to the name and ID of the invoking process. For example, puma[12345] or rack[3456].

The program value is used to populate the syslog "tag" field, must be 32 or fewer characters. In a few cases, an artifact of how the app is launched may lead to a default program value longer than 32 characters. For example, the thin Web server may generate a default program value such as:

thin server (0.0.0.0:3001)[11179]

If this occurs, the following exception will be raised when a RemoteSyslogSender is instantiated:

Tag must not be longer than 32 characters (ArgumentError)

To remedy this, explicitly provide a program argument which is shorter than 32 characters. See Usage.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/reproio/remote_syslog_sender.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.