Re: [Syslog] Small draft for Syslog File Storage?

A use case that is coming up fairly often in the health care world is the 
following:

1) System A is gathering syslog reports and archiving them into an 
internal data structure.  The incoming messages comply with the Syslog 
standard.

2) At some later time, an administrative request is made for "all syslog 
reports related to Event X".  The mechanism for making such a request is 
not covered by Syslog, but it's a feature of System A.

3) These events are extracted and put into a file format for transfer to 
System B.  This transfer may use media, ftp, or any other method suitable 
for transfering files.

4) System B analyzes the event reports.

A standard format for syslog file storage would cover the file transferred 
in step 3. 

Kind Regards,

Robert Horn | Agfa HealthCare
Research Scientist | HE/Technology Office
T  +1 978 897 4860

Agfa HealthCare Corporation, Gotham Parkway 580, Carlstadt, NJ 07072-2405, 
USA
http://www.agfa.com/healthcare/
Click on link to read important disclaimer: 
http://www.agfa.com/healthcare/maildisclaimer 

"Rainer Gerhards" <rgerhards@hq.adiscon.com> 
Sent by: syslog-bounces@ietf.org
11/10/2010 02:38 AM

To
"David Harrington" <ietfdbh@comcast.net>, <syslog@ietf.org>
cc

Subject
Re: [Syslog] Small draft for Syslog File Storage?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Harrington [mailto:ietfdbh@comcast.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2010 7:52 AM
> To: Rainer Gerhards; syslog@ietf.org
> Subject: RE: [Syslog] Small draft for Syslog File Storage?

Good questions, as usual. Obviously I have only one voice here, so for the
most part, I do not know. Would the OPS area be the right area to ask this 
in
addition to here?

My question was motivated by the Mitre CEE effort:

http://cee.mitre.org/

In very short words, CEE tries to define a standard event format, where 
what
syslog carries is a subset of the events possible. CEE will also define
syntaxes for log storage. We will most probably support XML, CSV, JSON and
syslog, with syslog being the only format where only a on-the-wire but no
file format standard exists.

I am on the CEE board and one thing we currently try to accomplish is 
define
a CEE-to-syslog mapping. There are a couple of the larger vendors 
interested
in logging on the board and the overall consensus seems to be that text 
files
play an important role when it comes to

a) storing log messages
b) feeding log messages into analysis backends

My own experience in the Linux environment and working with larger users
confirms that. I have some very large customers (which I cannot name due 
to
NDA) which store logs in (zipped) text file format because any other store 
is
impractical for their needs. Of course, that doesn't exclude 
representations
of other subsets in other formats for other needs.

I will try to gather feedback at least from the CEE community, but would
appreciate comments from others as well.

Rainer

> How many syslog sender/receiver implementers would be willing to
> support such a common format?
> 
> How many log anaysis application vendors would like such a common
> format? or do they consider it unneccesray because they convert
> incoming info into their own proprietary database formats anyway?
> 
> dbh
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: syslog-bounces@ietf.org
> > [mailto:syslog-bounces@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Rainer Gerhards
> > Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2010 2:24 PM
> > To: syslog@ietf.org
> > Subject: [Syslog] Small draft for Syslog File Storage?
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > In what we did, we specified the on-the-wire format. However,
> > we did not
> > specify any format to use when persisting syslog data to a file.
> >
> > Note that we were very generous when specifying the
> > on-the-wire format, for
> > example we permit LF, CR, NUL and many other characters
> > considered dangerous
> > in file formats.
> >
> > There are many tools available which interpret syslog data
> > stored in text
> > files. However, different syslog implementations may use
> > slightly different
> > file formats.
> >
> > Together with the control character issue, the file format
> > question both has
> > interoperability AND security issues. I think these would be
> > very easy to fix
> > if we write a small RFC that specifies how text is to be
> > encoded. It would be
> > similar, but much smaller to RFC4627 (JSON). Actually, I
> > think we would need
> > to carry over primarily its section 2.5.
> >
> > I would volunteer to write an initial draft, but would first
> > like to get some
> > feedback if this effort has any chance of getting through.
> >
> > Rainer
> > _______________________________________________
> > Syslog mailing list
> > Syslog@ietf.org
> > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/syslog

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