Configuration Directives

This is a part of the rsyslog.conf documentation.

Configuration Directives

All configuration directives need to be specified on a line by their own and must start with a dollar-sign. Note that those starting with the word "Action" modify the next action and should be specified in front of it.

Here is a list in alphabetical order. Follow links for a description.

Not all directives have an in-depth description right now. Default values for them are in bold. A more in-depth description will appear as implementation progresses.

Be sure to read information about queues in rsyslog - many parameter settings modify queue parameters. If in doubt, use the default, it is usually well-chosen and applicable in most cases.

$AbortOnUncleanConfig - abort startup if there is any issue with the config file
$ActionExecOnlyWhenPreviousIsSuspended
$ActionName <a_single_word> - used primarily for documentation, e.g. when generating a configuration graph. Available sice 4.3.1.
$ActionExecOnlyOnceEveryInterval <seconds> - execute action only if the last execute is at last <seconds> seconds in the past (more info in ommail, but may be used with any action)
$ActionExecOnlyEveryNthTime <number> - If configured, the next action will only be executed every n-th time. For example, if configured to 3, the first two messages that go into the action will be dropped, the 3rd will actually cause the action to execute, the 4th and 5th will be dropped, the 6th executed under the action, ... and so on. Note: this setting is automatically re-set when the actual action is defined.
$ActionExecOnlyEveryNthTimeTimeout <number-of-seconds> - has a meaning only if $ActionExecOnlyEveryNthTime is also configured for the same action. If so, the timeout setting specifies after which period the counting of "previous actions" expires and a new action count is begun. Specify 0 (the default) to disable timeouts.
Why is this option needed? Consider this case: a message comes in at, eg., 10am. That's count 1. Then, nothing happens for the next 10 hours. At 8pm, the next one occurs. That's count 2. Another 5 hours later, the next message occurs, bringing the total count to 3. Thus, this message now triggers the rule.
The question is if this is desired behavior? Or should the rule only be triggered if the messages occur within an e.g. 20 minute window? If the later is the case, you need a
$ActionExecOnlyEveryNthTimeTimeout 1200
This directive will timeout previous messages seen if they are older than 20 minutes. In the example above, the count would now be always 1 and consequently no rule would ever be triggered.
$ActionFileDefaultTemplate [templateName] - sets a new default template for file actions
$ActionFileEnableSync [on/off] - enables file syncing capability of omfile
$ActionForwardDefaultTemplate [templateName] - sets a new default template for UDP and plain TCP forwarding action
$ActionGSSForwardDefaultTemplate [templateName] - sets a new default template for GSS-API forwarding action
$ActionQueueCheckpointInterval <number>
$ActionQueueDequeueBatchSize <number> [default 16]
$ActionQueueDequeueSlowdown <number> [number is timeout in microseconds (1000000us is 1sec!), default 0 (no delay). Simple rate-limiting!]
$ActionQueueDiscardMark <number> [default 9750]
$ActionQueueDiscardSeverity <number> [*numerical* severity! default 4 (warning)]
$ActionQueueFileName <name>
$ActionQueueHighWaterMark <number> [default 8000]
$ActionQueueImmediateShutdown [on/off]
$ActionQueueSize <number>
$ActionQueueLowWaterMark <number> [default 2000]
$ActionQueueMaxFileSize <size_nbr>, default 1m
$ActionQueueTimeoutActionCompletion <number> [number is timeout in ms (1000ms is 1sec!), default 1000, 0 means immediate!]
$ActionQueueTimeoutEnqueue <number> [number is timeout in ms (1000ms is 1sec!), default 2000, 0 means indefinite]
$ActionQueueTimeoutShutdown <number> [number is timeout in ms (1000ms is 1sec!), default 0 (indefinite)]
$ActionQueueWorkerTimeoutThreadShutdown <number> [number is timeout in ms (1000ms is 1sec!), default 60000 (1 minute)]
$ActionQueueType [FixedArray/LinkedList/Direct/Disk]
$ActionQueueSaveOnShutdown [on/off]
$ActionQueueWorkerThreads <number>, num worker threads, default 1, recommended 1
$ActionQueueWorkerThreadMinumumMessages <number>, default 100
$ActionResumeInterval
$ActionResumeRetryCount <number> [default 0, -1 means eternal]
$ActionSendResendLastMsgOnReconn <[on/off]> specifies if the last message is to be resend when a connecition broken and has been reconnedcted. May increase reliability, but comes at the risk of message duplication.
$ActionSendStreamDriver <driver basename> just like $DefaultNetstreamDriver, but for the specific action
$ActionSendStreamDriverMode <mode>, default 0, mode to use with the stream driver (driver-specific)
$ActionSendStreamDriverAuthMode <mode>, authentication mode to use with the stream driver. Note that this directive requires TLS netstream drivers. For all others, it will be ignored. (driver-specific)
$ActionSendStreamDriverPermittedPeer <ID>, accepted fingerprint (SHA1) or name of remote peer. Note that this directive requires TLS netstream drivers. For all others, it will be ignored. (driver-specific) - directive may go away!
$ActionSendTCPRebindInterval nbr- [available since 4.5.1] - instructs the TCP send action to close and re-open the connection to the remote host every nbr of messages sent. Zero, the default, means that no such processing is done. This directive is useful for use with load-balancers. Note that there is some performance overhead associated with it, so it is advisable to not too often "rebind" the connection (what "too often" actually means depends on your configuration, a rule of thumb is that it should be not be much more often than once per second).
$ActionSendUDPRebindInterval nbr- [available since 4.3.2] - instructs the UDP send action to rebind the send socket every nbr of messages sent. Zero, the default, means that no rebind is done. This directive is useful for use with load-balancers.
$ActionWriteAllMarkMessages [on/off]- [available since 5.1.5] - normally, mark messages are written to actions only if the action was not recently executed (by default, recently means within the past 20 minutes). If this setting is switched to "on", mark messages are always sent to actions, no matter how recently they have been executed. In this mode, mark messages can be used as a kind of heartbeat. Note that this option auto-resets to "off", so if you intend to use it with multiple actions, it must be specified in front off all selector lines that should provide this functionality.
$AllowedSender
$ControlCharacterEscapePrefix
$DebugPrintCFSyslineHandlerList
$DebugPrintModuleList
$DebugPrintTemplateList
$DefaultNetstreamDriver <drivername>, the default network stream driver to use. Defaults to ptcp.$DefaultNetstreamDriverCAFile </path/to/cafile.pem>
$DefaultNetstreamDriverCertFile </path/to/certfile.pem>
$DefaultNetstreamDriverKeyFile </path/to/keyfile.pem>
$DefaultRuleset name - changes the default ruleset for unbound inputs to the provided name (the default default ruleset is named "RSYSLOG_DefaultRuleset"). It is advised to also read our paper on using multiple rule sets in rsyslog.
$CreateDirs [on/off] - create directories on an as-needed basis
$DirCreateMode
$DirGroup
$DirOwner
$DropMsgsWithMaliciousDnsPTRRecords
$DropTrailingLFOnReception
$DynaFileCacheSize
$Escape8BitCharactersOnReceive
$EscapeControlCharactersOnReceive
$EscapeControlCharactersOnReceive [on|off] - escape USASCII HT character
$ErrorMessagesToStderr [on|off] - direct rsyslogd error message to stderr (in addition to other targets)
$FailOnChownFailure
$FileCreateMode
$FileGroup
$FileOwner
$GenerateConfigGraph
$GssForwardServiceName
$GssListenServiceName
$GssMode
$HUPisRestart [on/off] - if set to on, a HUP is a full daemon restart. This means any queued messages are discarded (depending on queue configuration, of course) all modules are unloaded and reloaded. This mode keeps compatible with sysklogd, but is not recommended for use with rsyslog. To do a full restart, simply stop and start the daemon. The default (since 4.5.1) is "off". If it is set to "off", a HUP will only close open files. This is a much quicker action and usually the only one that is needed e.g. for log rotation. Restart-type HUPs (value "on") are depricated and will go away in rsyslog v5. So it is a good idea to change anything that needs it, now. Usually that should not be a big issue, as the restart-type HUP can easily be replaced by something along the lines of "/etc/init.d/rsyslog restart".
$IncludeConfig
MainMsgQueueCheckpointInterval <number>
$LogRSyslogStatusMessages [on/off] - If set to on (the default), rsyslog emits message on startup and shutdown as well as when it is HUPed. This information might be needed by some log analyzers. If set to off, no such status messages are logged, what may be useful for other scenarios. [available since 4.7.0 and 5.3.0]
$MainMsgQueueDequeueBatchSize <number> [default 32]
$MainMsgQueueDequeueSlowdown <number> [number is timeout in microseconds (1000000us is 1sec!), default 0 (no delay). Simple rate-limiting!]
$MainMsgQueueDiscardMark <number> [default 9750]
$MainMsgQueueDiscardSeverity <severity> [either a textual or numerical severity! default 4 (warning)]
$MainMsgQueueFileName <name>
$MainMsgQueueHighWaterMark <number> [default 8000]
$MainMsgQueueImmediateShutdown [on/off]
$MainMsgQueueSize
$MainMsgQueueLowWaterMark <number> [default 2000]
$MainMsgQueueMaxFileSize <size_nbr>, default 1m
$MainMsgQueueTimeoutActionCompletion <number> [number is timeout in ms (1000ms is 1sec!), default 1000, 0 means immediate!]
$MainMsgQueueTimeoutEnqueue <number> [number is timeout in ms (1000ms is 1sec!), default 2000, 0 means indefinite]
$MainMsgQueueTimeoutShutdown <number> [number is timeout in ms (1000ms is 1sec!), default 0 (indefinite)]
$MainMsgQueueWorkerTimeoutThreadShutdown <number> [number is timeout in ms (1000ms is 1sec!), default 60000 (1 minute)]
$MainMsgQueueType [FixedArray/LinkedList/Direct/Disk]
$MainMsgQueueSaveOnShutdown [on/off]
$MainMsgQueueWorkerThreads <number>, num worker threads, default 1, recommended 1
$MainMsgQueueWorkerThreadMinumumMessages <number>, default 100
$MarkMessagePeriod (immark)
$MaxMessageSize <size_nbr>, default 2k - allows to specify maximum supported message size (both for sending and receiving). The default should be sufficient for almost all cases. Do not set this below 1k, as it would cause interoperability problems with other syslog implementations.
Change the setting to e.g. 32768 if you would like to support large message sizes for IHE (32k is the current maximum needed for IHE). I was initially tempted to set the default to 32k, but there is a some memory footprint with the current implementation in rsyslog.
If you intend to receive Windows Event Log data (e.g. via EventReporter), you might want to increase this number to an even higher value, as event log messages can be very lengthy ("$MaxMessageSize 64k" is not a bad idea). Note: testing showed that 4k seems to be the typical maximum for UDP based syslog. This is an IP stack restriction. Not always ... but very often. If you go beyond that value, be sure to test that rsyslogd actually does what you think it should do ;) It is highly suggested to use a TCP based transport instead of UDP (plain TCP syslog, RELP). This resolves the UDP stack size restrictions.
Note that 2k, the current default, is the smallest size that must be supported in order to be compliant to the upcoming new syslog RFC series.
$MaxOpenFiles
$ModDir
$ModLoad
$OMFileAsyncWriting [on/off], if turned on, the files will be written in asynchronous mode via a separate thread. In that case, double buffers will be used so that one buffer can be filled while the other buffer is being written. Note that in order to enable $OMFileFlushInterval, $OMFileAsyncWriting must be set to "on". Otherwise, the flush interval will be ignored. Also note that when $OMFileFlushOnTXEnd is "on" but $OMFileAsyncWriting is off, output will only be written when the buffer is full. This may take several hours, or even require a rsyslog shutdown. However, a buffer flush can be forced in that case by sending rsyslogd a HUP signal.
$OMFileZipLevel 0..9 [default 0] - if greater 0, turns on gzip compression of the output file. The higher the number, the better the compression, but also the more CPU is required for zipping.
$OMFileIOBufferSize <size_nbr>, default 4k, size of the buffer used to writing output data. The larger the buffer, the potentially better performance is. The default of 4k is quite conservative, it is useful to go up to 64k, and 128K if you used gzip compression (then, even higher sizes may make sense)
$OMFileFlushOnTXEnd <[on/off]>, default ff. Omfile has the capability to write output using a buffered writer. Disk writes are only done when the buffer is full. So if an error happens during that write, data is potentially lost. In cases where this is unacceptable, set $OMFileFlushOnTXEnd to on. Then, data is written at the end of each transaction (for pre-v5 this means after each log message) and the usual error recovery thus can handle write errors without data loss. Note that this option severely reduces the effect of zip compression and should be switched to off for that use case. Note that the default -off- is primarily an aid to preserve the traditional syslogd behaviour.
$omfileForceChown - force ownership change for all files
$RepeatedMsgContainsOriginalMsg [on/off] - "last message repeated n times" messages, if generated, have a different format that contains the message that is being repeated. Note that only the first "n" characters are included, with n to be at least 80 characters, most probably more (this may change from version to version, thus no specific limit is given). The bottom line is that n is large enough to get a good idea which message was repeated but it is not necessarily large enough for the whole message. (Introduced with 4.1.5). Once set, it affects all following actions.
$RepeatedMsgReduction
$ResetConfigVariables
$Ruleset name - starts a new ruleset or switches back to one already defined. All following actions belong to that new rule set. the name does not yet exist, it is created. To switch back to rsyslog's default ruleset, specify "RSYSLOG_DefaultRuleset") as the name. All following actions belong to that new rule set. It is advised to also read our paper on using multiple rule sets in rsyslog.
$RulesetCreateMainQueue on - creates a ruleset-specific main queue.
$RulesetParser - enables to set a specific (list of) message parsers to be used with the ruleset.
$OptimizeForUniprocessor [on/off] - turns on optimizatons which lead to better performance on uniprocessors. If you run on multicore-machiens, turning this off lessens CPU load. The default may change as uniprocessor systems become less common. [available since 4.1.0]
$PreserveFQDN [on/off) - if set to off (legacy default to remain compatible to sysklogd), the domain part from a name that is within the same domain as the receiving system is stripped. If set to on, full names are always used.
$WorkDirectory <name> (directory for spool and other work files)
$PrivDropToGroup
$PrivDropToGroupID
$PrivDropToUser
$PrivDropToUserID
$UMASK

Where <size_nbr> is specified above, modifiers can be used after the number part. For example, 1k means 1024. Supported are k(ilo), m(ega), g(iga), t(era), p(eta) and e(xa). Lower case letters refer to the traditional binary defintion (e.g. 1m equals 1,048,576) whereas upper case letters refer to their new 1000-based definition (e.g 1M equals 1,000,000).

Numbers may include '.' and ',' for readability. So you can for example specify either "1000" or "1,000" with the same result. Please note that rsyslogd simply ignores the punctuation. Form it's point of view, "1,,0.0.,.,0" also has the value 1000.

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