RFC 5424 - The Syslog Protocol

Network Working Group
Request for Comments: 5424
Obsoletes: 3164
Category: Standards Track

Author:
R. Gerhards, Adiscon GmbH

Publication Date: March 2009

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Status of This Memo

This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

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Abstract

This document describes the syslog protocol, which is used to convey event notification messages. This protocol utilizes a layered architecture, which allows the use of any number of transport protocols for transmission of syslog messages. It also provides a message format that allows vendor-specific extensions to be provided in a structured way.

This document has been written with the original design goals for traditional syslog in mind. The need for a new layered specification has arisen because standardization efforts for reliable and secure syslog extensions suffer from the lack of a Standards-Track and transport-independent RFC. Without this document, each other standard needs to define its own syslog packet format and transport mechanism, which over time will introduce subtle compatibility issues. This document tries to provide a foundation that syslog extensions can build on. This layered architecture approach also provides a solid basis that allows code to be written once for each syslog feature rather than once for each transport.

This document obsoletes RFC 3164.

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Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Conventions Used in This Document
• 3. Definitions
• 4. Basic Principles
  • 4.1. Example Deployment Scenarios
• 5. Transport Layer Protocol
  • 5.1. Minimum Required Transport Mapping
• 6. Syslog Message Format
  • 6.1. Message Length
  • 6.2. HEADER
    • 6.2.1. PRI
    • 6.2.2. VERSION
    • 6.2.3. TIMESTAMP
    • 6.2.4. HOSTNAME
    • 6.2.5. APP-NAME
    • 6.2.6. PROCID
    • 6.2.7. MSGID
  • 6.3. STRUCTURED-DATA
    • 6.3.1. SD-ELEMENT
    • 6.3.2. SD-ID
    • 6.3.3. SD-PARAM
    • 6.3.4. Change Control
    • 6.3.5. Examples
  • 6.4. MSG
  • 6.5. Examples
• 7. Structured Data IDs
  • 7.1. timeQuality
  • 7.2. origin
  • 7.3. meta
• 8. Security Considerations
• 9. IANA Considerations
• 10. Working Group
• 11. Acknowledgments
• 12. References
  • 12.1. Normative References
  • 12.2. Informative References
• Appendix A. Implementer Guidelines

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