rsyslog vs. systemd journal?

I gave an invited talk on this topic at LinuxTag 2013 in Berlin. I was originally asked to talk about “rsyslog vs. journal”, but requested that a question mark is added: “rsyslog vs. journal?”. This title much better reflects our current thinking in regard to the journal project.

Rather than eloborating on what’s our position, I thought it is easier if I just share the slide deck – and the full paper I have written on it. In a nutshell, both answer the question what we currently think of the journal, where we see which technology deployed and which cool things rsyslog can do to enhance enterprise logging. There is also a very intereting history lesson included. But enough of that, on to the real things:

The paper should definitely have all the details you ever want to know (well… ;)) and is a good read if you want to dig deeper:

Rsyslog vs Systemd Journal (Paper) from Rainer Gerhards

Note: the PDF can be downloaded directly from slideshare (use the “Save” button right on top of the paper).

LinuxTag 2013

I gave a talk on “rsyslog vs journal?” at LinuxTag 2013 in Berlin (slides an paper now available at “rsyslog vs. journal?” blog post). It was a great event, and I had quite some good discussions with rsyslog users. As it looks, the v7 config is very well received and many folks are moving toward that version.

Of course, I also learned (not surprisingly) that there is desire for better doc. In some discussions, the idea of small video tuturials came up, and I have to admit that I like this idea. It looks like it is quicker to do for me than writing full-blown tutorials and yet is probably very useful especially for folks who look for a very specific target. So I hope to find time to do some experimenting. I’ll probably start with some extracts from my talk, first doing the theoretic thing and then showing how things actually work – in 5 minute shots. So stay tuned.

In the mean time, here is a quick glimpse at the LinuxTag social event, which I also enjoyed very much (it’s actually rather short, because I wasn’t so much into just filming ;)).

Moving to github?

I am re-evaluating my development environment. One idea that pops up is if I should move the rsyslog project over to github. Initially, I was rather sceptic about using a third-party for the git repository (after all, a git server is not rocket science…), but github seems to have gotten momentum in the past years. But so far it is more or less my gut feeling that migrating over to it may make sense.

So I am looking for feedback from my users and fellow developers: what are the pros and cons on moving to github in your opinion? Please be subjective, that’s what I am looking for. So there is no need to be shy.

Please comment and let me know your thoughts!
Rainer

Internet Security … back in 2000

Wanna travel back in time? I just dug out one of my Internet security presentations from May 2000. It was aimed at the executive level, so there is not much technical detail in it. It is unfortunately in German, but non-German-speakers can probably still grasp the ideas.

Looking at it 13 years later, I have the feeling we have not so much evolved. Many of the issues still persist, even fake mail is still used – but to a far-less extent than what it was in 2000. At least business users (and mail systems) handle this decently … most of the time ;)