Written by Rainer Gerhards (2007-07-26)
This document is incomplete. The module interface is also quite incomplete and under development. Do not currently use it! You may want to visit Rainer's blog to learn what's going on.
In theory, modules provide input and output, among other functions, in rsyslog. In practice, modules are only utilized for output in the current release. The module interface is not yet completed and a moving target. We do not recommend to write a module based on the current specification. If you do, please be prepared that future released of rsyslog will probably break your module.
A goal of modularization is to provide an easy to use plug-in interface. However, this goal is not yet reached and all modules must be statically linked.
Modules are directly loaded into rsyslog's address space. As such, any module is provided a big level of trust. Please note that further module interfaces might provide a way to load a module into an isolated address space. This, however, is far from being completed. So the number one rule about module security is to run only code that you know you can trust.
Copyright (c) 2007 Rainer Gerhards and Adiscon.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license can be viewed at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html.