Rsyslog Documentation Review Proposal

Currently the Rsyslog documentation is spread over many places. It’s not logical and well-organized as well. The objective of this proposal is to address those issues and establish a procedure for further development of the documentation.

Note

We SHOULD NOT write examples using mixed formats, RainerScripts and legacy. It confused the readers. We can provide them in both formats, but should not mix them.

Compile information from current sources of information

Below are listed the official locations where documentation about Rsyslog can be found.

• Wiki: http://wiki.rsyslog.com/index.php/Main_Page
• Rainer’s blog: https://rainer.gerhards.net/2012/10/how-to-use-rsyslogs-ruleset-and-call.html
• Issues: https://github.com/rsyslog/rsyslog
• docs: https://github.com/rsyslog/rsyslog-doc
• Forum: http://kb.monitorware.com/configuration-f36.html
• https://www.youtube.com/user/rainergerhards

Add a Cookbook Section

We should create some cookbooks to help people get started with Rsyslog. Some candidates to be a cookbook are below.

• http://sickbits.net/log-storage-and-analysis-infrastructure-reliable-logging-and-analysis-with-rsyslog-and-relp/
• http://kb.monitorware.com/omfile-with-dynfile-syslogfacility-text-t12515.html
• http://www.freeipa.org/page/Howto/Centralised_Logging_with_Logstash/ElasticSearch/Kibana

Add a subsection called “processing logs from”. We’d place articles that’d would help people with specific common scenarios for a specific log sender application.

Add a Reference Section

This section would have all the reference configuration of all possibile tags, in both formats, RainerScript and legacy.

Write articles that address common problems

Some of the common are following.

• https://github.com/rsyslog/rsyslog/issues/160
• http://kb.monitorware.com/nginx-logging-rsyslog-t12359.html
• http://trac.nginx.org/nginx/ticket/677

Extra

Some resources worth taking a look.

• https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/System_Administrators_Guide/ch-Viewing_and_Managing_Log_Files.html

  • https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/06_lang-online.pdf
  • https://media.readthedocs.org/pdf/rsyslog/latest/rsyslog.pdf
  • http://download.rsyslog.com/rainerscript2_rsyslog.conf
  • http://people.redhat.com/pvrabec/rpms/rsyslog/rsyslog-example.conf
  • http://www.rsyslog.com/doc/syslog_parsing.html

Initial Summary

• Troubleshooting

  • http://www.rsyslog.com/how-can-i-check-the-config/

Proposed Documentation Structure

toctree:

new_documentation/index

See also

Help with configuring/using Rsyslog:

• Mailing list - best route for general questions
• GitHub: rsyslog source project - detailed questions, reporting issues that are believed to be bugs with Rsyslog
• Stack Exchange (View, Ask) - experimental support from rsyslog community

See also

Contributing to Rsyslog:

• Source project: rsyslog project README.
• Documentation: rsyslog-doc project README