Description

Installs rsyslog to replace sysklogd for client and/or server use. By default, server will be set up to log to files.

Changes

v1.0.0:

• [COOK-836] - use an attribute to specify the role to search for instead of relying on the rsyslog['server'] attribute.
• Clean up attribute usage to use strings instead of symbols.
• Update this README.
• Better handling for chef-solo.

Requirements

Platform

Tested on Ubuntu 8.04, 9.10, 10.04.

For Ubuntu 8.04, the rsyslog package will be installed from a PPA via the default.rb recipe in order to get 4.2.0 backported from 10.04.

• https://launchpad.net/~a.bono/+archive/rsyslog

Ubuntu 8.10 and 9.04 are no longer supported releases and have not been tested with this cookbook.

Cookbooks

• cron (http://community.opscode.com/cookbooks/cron)

Other

To use the recipe[rsyslog::client] recipe, you'll need to set up a
role to search for. See the Recipes, and Examples sections below.

Attributes

See attributes/default.rb for default values.

• node['rsyslog']['log_dir'] - If the node is an rsyslog server, this specifies the directory where the logs should be stored.
• node['rsyslog']['server'] - Used to indicate whether the node running Chef is an rsyslog server. As of cookbook v1.0.0, this is determined automatically through search. The server recipe will set this to true. It is otherwise unused in the current version.
• node['rsyslog']['protocol'] - Specify whether to use udp or tcp for remote loghost.
• node['rsyslog']['port'] - Specify the port which rsyslog should connect to a remote loghost.
• node['rsyslog']['server_role'] - Role applied to a remote loghost. Used by recipe[rsyslog::client] to search for the loghost.

Recipes

default

Installs the rsyslog package, manages the rsyslog service and sets up
basic configuration for a standalone machine.

client

Includes recipe[rsyslog].

Uses Chef search to find a remote loghost node with the role specified
by node['rsyslog']['server_role'] and uses its ipaddress attribute
to send log messages. If the node itself has the server_role in the
expanded roles, then the configuration is skipped. If the node had an
/etc/rsyslog.d/server.conf file previously configured, this file
gets removed to prevent duplicate logging. Any previous logs are not
cleaned up from the log_dir.

server

Configures the node to be an rsyslog loghost. The node should have the
role specified by node['rsyslog']['server_role'] applied so client
nodes can find it with search. This recipe will create the logs in
node['rsyslog']['log_dir'], and the configuration is in
/etc/rsyslog.d/server.conf. This recipe also removes any previous
configuration to a remote server by removing the
/etc/rsyslog.d/remote.conf file. Finally, a cron job is set up to
compress logs in the log_dir that are older than one day.

The server configuration will set up log_dir for each client, by
date. Directory structure:

<%= @log_dir %>/YEAR/MONTH/DAY/HOSTNAME/"logfile"

For example:

/srv/rsyslog/2011/11/19/www/messages

At this time, the server can only listen on UDP or TCP.

Usage

Use recipe[rsyslog] to install and start rsyslog as a basic
configured service for standalone systems.

Use recipe[rsyslog::client] to have nodes search for the loghost
automatically to configure remote [r]syslog.

Use recipe[rsyslog::server] to set up a loghost. It will listen on
node['rsyslog']['port'] protocol node['rsyslog']['protocol'].

If you set up a different kind of centralized loghost (syslog-ng,
graylog2, logstash, etc), you can still send log messages to it as
long as the port and protocol match up with the server
software. See Examples

Examples

A base role (e.g., roles/base.rb), applied to all nodes so they are syslog clients:

name "base"
description "Base role applied to all nodes
run_list("recipe[rsyslog::client]")

Then, a role for the loghost (should only be one):

name "loghost"
description "Central syslog server"
run_list("recipe[rsyslog::server]")

By default this will set up the clients search for a node with the
loghost role to talk to the server on TCP port 514. Change the
protocol and port rsyslog attributes to modify this.

If you're using another log server software on your loghost, such as
graylog2, you can use the role for that loghost for the search
instead. For example, if the role of your graylog2 server is
graylog2_server, then modify the base role for the server role:

name "base"
description "Base role applied to all nodes
run_list("recipe[rsyslog::client]")
default_attributes(
  "rsyslog" => {
    "server_role" => "graylog2_server"
  }
)

Then make sure you have a role named graylog2_server applied to some
node, and recipe[rsyslog::client] will configure the local system to
send logs to graylog2.

License and Author

Author:: Joshua Timberman (joshua@opscode.com)

Copyright:: 2009-2011, Opscode, Inc

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.