rsyslog work log 28

Past day’s rsyslog work log:
2008-02-29
– corrected page title in omsnmp doc
– some stage work on rsyslog loader
– changed obj base object’s calling interface to use the new obj_if_t
interface structure
– tweaked omgssapi a bit to use our regular calling conventions
– added “debug” command to debug environment settings
– changed the object/interface system to use a new way of calling, giving
up the numerical object ID. This was necessary as we needed more
extensibility for third-party modules (which don’t play at all with
the previous fixed object ID). This is stage work for the object loader.
Please note that I needed to change the object (de)serializer, I can’t
outrule that I have introduced bugs there.
– corrected invalid function definition
– converted conf.c to an abstract class
2008-03-01
– added class tcps
– added class tcps_sess
2008-03-02
– changed imtcp to use new classes; seems to work; imgssapi currently broken

rsyslog work log 29

Yesterday’s rsyslog work log:
2008-02-28
– updated “mysql paper” to include information for other databases, too
– worked a bit on the rsyslog/syslog-ng comparsion – slowly gets in better
shape ;)
– wrote doc on how to use the expression engine
– changed ABNF to fully support old property names
– added case-insensitive comparison operations
– MILESTONE: initial expression support completed
– (finally;)) released 3.12.0
– implemented environment-settable debug options
– enabled debug-support to pull runtime options from environment (bug 18)
– bugfix: removed debugging code that I forgot to remove before releasing
3.12.0 (does not cause harm and happened only during startup)
– added “help” command to runtime debug flags
– switched to git as a test run; currently I maintain both the cvs
and git repositories (via manual file copies). If all goes well, will switch
to git-only when I feel good about it (a week or so?)

rsyslog work log 30

Yesterday’s rsyslog work log:
2008-02-27
– bugfix: queue cancel cleanup handler could be called with
invalid pointer if dequeue failed
– bugfix: imfile could abort under extreme stress conditions
(when it was terminated before it could open all of its
to be monitored files)
– bugfix: queue disk file were not properly persisted when
immediately after closing an output file rsyslog was stopped
or huped (the new output file open must NOT have happend at
that point) – this lead to a sparse and invalid queue file
which could cause several problems to the engine (unpredictable
results). This situation should have happened only in very
rare cases. tracker: http://bugzilla.adiscon.com/show_bug.cgi?id=40
– bugfix: during queue shutdown, an assert invalidly triggered when
the primary queue’s DA worker was terminated while the DA queue’s
regular worker was still executing. This could result in a segfault
during shutdown.
tracker: http://bugzilla.adiscon.com/show_bug.cgi?id=41
– bugfix: object property deserializer did not handle negative numbers
– bugfix: queue aborted when it was shut down, DA-enabled, DA mode
was just initiated but not fully initialized (a race condition)
– bugfix: queue properties sizeOnDisk, bytesRead were persisted to
disk with wrong data type (long instead of int64) – could cause
problems on 32 bit machines
– fixed a problem introduced today, on-disk queue size was now
wrongly calculated (but not in any released version)

rsyslog work log 31

Yesterday’s rsyslog work log:
2008-02-26
– implemented data type conversion
– released 3.11.5
– implemented majority of comparison operations
– added some temporary testing aids to conf.c, so that we can debug
expression support as it is implemented
– fixed a couple of bugs in expression system
– added more operations to virtual machine – now works well with
constants
– added PUSHMSGVAR operation to vm
– included expression support in filter module (and it works ;))
– added sysvar class
– added PUSHSYSVAR operation to vm
– added string concatenation operator & to RainerScript
– fixed segfault when pure string values were tried to be added
– some stage work for library modules
– fixed wrong pointer in imgssapi config coding
– added $InputGSSServerMaxSessions config directive
– worked on queue stability

A Web Site for RainerScript ;)

Just to make sure nobody will grab the name RainerScript, I have just created a web site for RainerScript. Of course, it does not contain any real useful information, but at least it shows I am there. As far as I know, this can be helpful in some cases ;)

Why RainerScript?

After my initial announcement of RainerScript, I got some good feedback. I’d like to reproduce an especially useful discussion here:

> I wondered if using a complete scripting language for configuraton
> is not making it overly complex and error prone. I specifically means
> function definition etc. here.

The key is that I will model it so that the complexity is only seen when
it is actually needed. Most importantly, it will continue to understand
plain old syslog.conf format. So most peoply will probably never see the
scripting features. HOWEVER, I think it is useful to have these for a
few select folks who really need them. Function definitions, for
example, will counter syslog-ng’s feature to define a filter. I don’t
know if it is actually worth and useful to define a filter to reuse it.
But with the function, you can do it. So those coming from syslog-ng can
find their favorite feature ;)

I think it is probably worth to think about how I came to the idea of
scripting support. The root cause is complex logic, complex expressions.
A few days ago I started to implement them … and quickly found out
that actually the easiest way is “to do it right”. So I now have a
parse, bytecode and an interpreter/virtual machine running in rsyslog.
All of this “just” to support complex expressions. While I thought about
it, I finally realized that it takes just a little bit to extend these
things so that the end result will be an easy to use scripting facility.
That also solves the config file issues that’s dangeling so long and, as
a side-effect, brings up some interesting options (for those that have
need for it).

For example, I thought about how to best handle rewriting message
content. Now, the solution is obvious. I’ll implement a “set” facility
in the language that enables message variables to be rewritten on the
fly (e.g. for folks who would like to drop some parts of the message). I
agree, all not pretty mainstream, but useful in some cases. And keep in
mind that it comes at a (complexity) cost only if you need it. That’s
based on the fact that expression support was originally planned as a
by-line of the current config format, so it needed to work with the rest
in any way ;)

> But if you really need that kind of flexibility and scripting
> capabilites, have you considered to use existing languages, like lua
> , which were specifically designed to be embedded into
> applications?

Not really, because of the way it has evolved. A know a new language is
already evil, but I see big benefit for the project this time. The
reason is that I can very tightly integrate it into rsyslog’s features
like the upcoming loader. So it will be very cleanly and efficiently
integrated. For example, I don’t think that I could support old-style
format *just within* the new style format with any third-party engine.

rsyslog work log 32

Yesterday’s rsyslog work log:
2008-02-25
– implemented data type conversion
– released 3.11.5
– implemented majority of comparison operations
– added some temporary testing aids to conf.c, so that we can debug
expression support as it is implemented
– fixed a couple of bugs in expression system
– added more operations to virtual machine – now works well with
constants
– added PUSHMSGVAR operation to vm
– included expression support in filter module (and it works ;))
– added sysvar class
– added PUSHSYSVAR operation to vm
– added string concatenation operator & to RainerScript
– fixed segfault when pure string values were tried to be added

rsyslog work log 33

Past day’s rsyslog work log:
2008-02-22
– integrated patch from Peter Vrabec to change the build process to produce
imtcp.so and imgssapi.so from imtcp.c (in support of new gassapi
input module) – many thanks, Peter!
– applied patch by varmojfekoj to allow gssapi functionality to be
build as a separate plugin (so that gssapi and plain tcp
functionality can be individually distributed). Also inclulded
some other enhancements, most importantly initial compatibility
mode system
– added some information on old-style config to ABNF (probably
useful in getting us to a new config format)
– fixed bug in duplicate module load detection
– corrected config doc – IETF no longer intends to add facilities
– updated compatibility notes doc
– added some doc for imgssapi and imtcp input modules
– completed initial vmstk implementation
– begun implementing rsyslog virtual machine (vm class)
– worked a bit on type conversion (specified the interface)
– simplified var object, now only supports strings and numbers as
a single type
– worked a bit on var_t data type conversion
2008-02-24
– added some thoughts on RainerScript
– worked a bit on conversion functions

Introducing rainerscript ;) – and some rsyslog futures

What the heck is this? “rainerscript”? An acute case of megalomania?

Wait a moment… What’s this all about? It all starts with expression support in rsyslog and the notorious question on what the future configuration file format for rsyslog should be. From the technical perspective, I think I am finally approaching a conclusion, which will probably look quite a bit like a script language. A script language that will be specifically tailored (and well suited) to processing (system) events.

Heck, another new term… Well, if you know Adiscon’s MonitorWare family, its not new to you. In MonitorWare (where I consider rsyslog still to be a part of), we always thought about generic system events, and not syslog messages, event logs, snmp traps and all the like. The same concept somewhat naturally will apply to rsyslog and it begins to manifest with multiple input plugins. The imfile plugin is probably the first extension that brings this spirit to life. While all other plugins so far process syslog messages, imfile processes plain text files. Of course, they convert easily to syslog messages. But from a high-level design perspective you can think of event messages – some being syslog, some being file lines, some other being… use your imagination (or visit the MonitorWare site to get an idea where else events can come from).

The bottom line is that rsyslog has evolved and is further evolving into something that of course can process syslog messages. But it’s not limited to that. It can process whatever system event occurs. It’s just a matter of the input plugins. Of course, the rest of the engine must also support event classes other than syslog. That’s, among others, what I am currently working on.

To be a really useful tool, its configuration must be advanced from what it currently is. Most specifically, we must be able to change event (read: message) properties on the fly, supply different parsing capabilities, maybe have some user-supplied logic during the event flow… and so on.

The most natural solution is to provide some (more or less powerful) scripting capabilities. I am convinced that’s the right route, especially now that I have done the initial work on rsyslog expressions. It’s clean, its very flexible, its extensible and — it’s easy to use. And in order to provide freedom of choice, I’ll most probably introduce a very similar concept into Adiscon’s commercial products. And finally, over time others may find it appealing to, so I can’t outrule there will be other implementations of the same idea.

This made me come to the conclusion that I needed a better name than “rsyslog.conf” for this concept. Initially, a name of “syslogscript” came up my mind. But as I said, it’s not just about syslog. The same applies to “logscript”, we are *not* just talking about logs (at least in the future). I begun to think and after some time arrived at “EventScript”. A perfect match – but also a third party trademark (even a registered one!). So forget about it. “rscript” – also a trademark. I ran out of good names and I also became impatient. I would also like to make sure that nobody again comes along to cause grief to me, just as Huwai did with it recent junk syslog patent. So I remembered a trick a German TV journal publisher used when his competitors filed law suit after law suite over name violations of his journal when he tried to start a new publication in a field that was obviously monopolized by a few insiders: he simply used his own name in the journal title. Of course, that doesn’t make a name totally immune against legal action, but it seams to be a quite strong weapon against all these patent and tradmark trolls out there.

And so I finally arrived at the idea that a good name for the event scripting language may be “rainerscript”. Some folks (not me! ;-) ) may even abbreviate it to rscript, fishing in trademark-mined territory. Don’t do that or at least do it at your own risk ;)

I hope you find the choice of name acceptable — and the overall direction we are taking a good one. As a side-note please let me assure that rsyslog’s easy and simple sysklogd-like configuration will not go away. Rainerscript will fully support that syntax, as well as all currently existing $-configuration lines. While the previous configuration format will become part of rainerscript, you actually do not need to know anything about the scripting language unless you intend to do some pretty advanced things. Rainerscript is not something available immediately. It will evolve over time. A first glimpse at it will be available in 3.12.0 in form of the rsyslog expression support. With it, you can do things like (all of the below is on one line, which is important):

if $message contains 'test' and $facility == local7 then -/var/log/local7test.log

Notice the new if and the old style action specifier (“-/var/log…”). The script code is just a natural extension to existing configuration format.

rsyslog work log 34

Yesterday’s rsyslog work log:
2008-02-21
– changed rsCStrObj name to cstr_t, which is more inline with the
rest of rsyslog (now) and also much easier to type
– fixed some doc errors – thanks to Michael Biebl for pointing
them out
– some cleanup for 3.11.4 release
– first steps in implementing object interfaces (stage work for
later dynamic class loading)
– changed calling interface for some more objects
– some more interface changes
– changed tokenizer to utilize var class instead of scalar types
– modified parser and tokenizer to support slight ABNF modifications
from yesterday
– change in ABNF was wrong – made a slightly different change
– fixed bugs in tokenizer
– expression compiler finished (except bugs, of course ;))
– added empty vmstk class
– defined some entry points in vmstk