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PDBTOOL(1) | The pdbtool manual page | PDBTOOL(1) |
NAME¶
pdbtool - An application to test and convert syslog-ng pattern database rulesSYNOPSIS¶
pdbtool
[command] [options]
DESCRIPTION¶
This manual page is only an abstract; for the complete documentation of syslog-ng and pdbtool, see The syslog-ng Administrator Guide[1]. The syslog-ng application can match the contents of the log messages to a database of predefined message patterns (also called patterndb). By comparing the messages to the known patterns, syslog-ng is able to identify the exact type of the messages, tag the messages, and sort them into message classes. The message classes can be used to classify the type of the event described in the log message. The functionality of the pattern database is similar to that of the logcheck project, but the syslog-ng approach is faster, scales better, and is much easier to maintain compared to the regular expressions of logcheck. The pdbtool application is a utility that can be used to:•test message patterns;
•convert an older pattern database to
the latest database format;
•merge pattern databases into a single
file;
•dump the RADIX tree built from the
pattern database (or a part of it) to explore how the pattern matching
works.
THE DUMP COMMAND¶
dump
[options]
Display the RADIX tree built from the patterns. This shows how are the patterns
represented in syslog-ng and it might also help to track down pattern-matching
problems. The dump utility can dump the tree used for matching the PROGRAM or
the MSG parts.
--pdb or -p
Name of the pattern database file to
use.
--program or -P
Displays the RADIX tree built from the
patterns belonging to the $PROGRAM application.
--program-tree or -T
Display the $PROGRAM tree.
Example and sample output:
pdbtool dump -p patterndb.xml -P 'sshd'
'p' 'assword for' @QSTRING:@ 'from' @QSTRING:@ 'port ' @NUMBER:@ rule_id='fc49054e-75fd-11dd-9bba-001e6806451b' ' ssh' rule_id='fc55cf86-75fd-11dd-9bba-001e6806451b' '2' rule_id='fc4b7982-75fd-11dd-9bba-001e6806451b' 'ublickey for' @QSTRING:@ 'from' @QSTRING:@ 'port ' @NUMBER:@ rule_id='fc4d377c-75fd-11dd-9bba-001e6806451b' ' ssh' rule_id='fc5441ac-75fd-11dd-9bba-001e6806451b' '2' rule_id='fc44a9fe-75fd-11dd-9bba-001e6806451b'
THE MATCH COMMAND¶
match
[options]
Use the match command to test the rules in a pattern database. The
command tries to match the specified message against the patterns of the
database, evaluates the parsers of the pattern, and also displays which part
of the message was parsed successfully. The command returns with a 0
(success) or 1 (no match) return code and displays the following
information:
•the class assigned to the message (that
is, system, violation, and so on),
•the ID of the rule that matched the
message, and
•the values of the parsers (if there
were parsers in the matching pattern).
The match command has the following options:
--color-out or -c
Color the terminal output to highlight the
part of the message that was successfully parsed.
--debug-csv or -C
Print the debugging information returned by
the --debug-pattern option as comma-separated values.
--debug-pattern or -D
Print debugging information about the pattern
matching. See also the --debug-csv option.
--file=<filename-with-path> or -f
Process the messages of the specified log file
with the pattern database. This option allows to classify messages offline,
and to apply the pattern database to already existing logfiles. To read the
messages from the standard input (stdin), specify a hyphen ( -)
character instead of a filename.
--filter=<filter-expression> or -F
Print only messages matching the specified
syslog-ng filter expression.
--message or -M
The text of the log message to match (only the
$MESSAGE part without the syslog headers).
--pdb or -p
Name of the pattern database file to
use.
--program or -P
Name of the program to use, as contained in
the $PROGRAM part of the syslog message.
--template=<template-expression> or -T
A syslog-ng template expression that is used
to format the output messages.
Example: The following command checks if the patterndb.xml file recognizes the
Accepted publickey for myuser from 127.0.0.1 port 59357 ssh2 message:
pdbtool match -p patterndb.xml -P sshd -M "Accepted publickey for myuser from 127.0.0.1 port 59357 ssh2"
pdbtool match -p sshd.pdb \ –file /var/log/messages \ –filter ‘tags(“usracct”);’
THE MERGE COMMAND¶
merge
[options]
Use the merge command to combine separate pattern database files into a
single file (pattern databases are usually stored in separate files per
applications to simplify maintenance). If a file uses an older database
format, it is automatically updated to the latest format (V3). See the
The syslog-ng Administrator Guide[1] for details on the
different pattern database versions.
--directory or -D
The directory that contains the pattern
database XML files to be merged.
--glob or -G
Specify filenames to be merged using a glob
pattern, for example, using wildcards. For details on glob patterns, see
man glob. This pattern is applied only to the filenames, and not on
directory names.
--pdb or -p
Name of the output pattern database
file.
--recursive or -r
Merge files from subdirectories as well.
Example:
pdbtool merge --recursive --directory /home/me/mypatterns/ --pdb /var/lib/syslog-ng/patterndb.xml
THE PATTERNIZE COMMAND¶
patternize
[options]
Automatically create a pattern database from a log file containing a large
number of log messages. The resulting pattern database is printed to the
standard output (stdout). The pdbtool patternize command uses a data
clustering technique to find similar log messages and replacing the differing
parts with @ESTRING:: @ parsers. For details on pattern databases and
message parsers, see the The syslog-ng Administrator Guide[1].
The patternize command is available only in syslog-ng OSE version 3.2
and later.
--file=<path> or -f
The logfile containing the log messages to
create patterns from. To receive the log messages from the standard input
(stdin), use -.
--iterate-outliers or -o
Recursively iterate on the log lines to cover
as many log messages with patterns as possible.
--named-parsers or -n
The number of example log messages to include
in the pattern database for every pattern. Default value: 1
--samples=<number-of-samples>
Include a generated name in the parsers, for
example, .dict.string1, .dict.string2, and so on.
--support=<number> or -S
A pattern is added to the output pattern
database if at least the specified percentage of log messages from the input
logfile match the pattern. For example, if the input logfile contains 1000 log
messages and the --support=3.0 option is used, a pattern is created
only if the pattern matches at least 3 percent of the log messages (that is,
30 log messages). If patternize does not create enough patterns, try to
decrease the support value.
Default value: 4.0
Example:
pdbtool patternize --support=2.5 --file=/var/log/messages
THE TEST COMMAND¶
test
[options]
Use the test command to validate a pattern database XML file. Note that
you must have the xmllint application installed. The test
command is available only in syslog-ng OSE version 3.2 and later.
--validate
Validate a pattern database XML file.
Example:
pdbtool test --validate /home/me/mypatterndb.pdb
FILES¶
SEE ALSO¶
AUTHOR¶
This manual page was written by the BalaBit Documentation Team <documentation@balabit.com>.COPYRIGHT¶
¶
The authors grant permission to copy, distribute and/or modify this manual page under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2 or newer (GPL v2+).NOTES¶
- 1.
-
The syslog-ng Administrator Guide
- 2.
- visit the syslog-ng wiki
- 3.
- syslog-ng mailing list
- 4.
- syslog-ng Insider Blog
03/20/2013 | syslog-ng Open Source Edition |