metalog8

Usage

Overview

Metalog is a modern replacement for syslogd and klogd. The logged messages can be dispatched according to their facility, urgency, program name and/or Perl-compatible regular expressions. Log files can be automatically rotated when they exceed a certain size or age. External shell scripts (ex: mail) can be launched when specific patterns are found.

Logs are written according to RFC3164, RFC5423 or a minimal format with optional severity levels.

It can send its logs to remote syslog servers via UDP. It can gather info from the kernel or /dev/log as well as from several Unix Domain Sockets. This allows logging from chrooted or containerized applications.

Metalog is easier to configure than syslogd and syslog-ng, accepts unlimited number of rules and has (switchable) memory bufferisation for maximal performance.

Options

-a, --async

Improve performance by using buffers (bug log files won't get updated in real time). Can be overridden for individual logs.

-B, --daemonize

Have the server start in background (daemonization).

-c, --consolelevel=0..7

Set the console log level (Linux only).

-C, --configfile=file

Use an alternate configuration file.

-g, --group=group

Change the GID of the metalog process. Created files will be owned by this group.

-h, --help

Output help information and exit.

-N, --no-kernel

Do not attempt to log messages from the kernel.

-p, --pidfile=file

Use an alternate file to store the process number.

-S, --socket=path

Use an alternate socket path for main syslog listener.

-s, --sync, --synchronous

Start in synchronous mode, with no bufferization. Can be overridden for individual logs.

-t, --test-config

Exit after parsing the config file(s). Returns 0 if config is ok.

-v, --verbose

Run in verbose mode (useful for debugging behavior).

-V, --version

Display metalog version information.

Signals

Files

Note that the exact paths depend on the build settings. These are the standard paths.

/etc/metalog.conf
/var/run/metalog.pid
/dev/log