Category: v8

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the rsyslog v8 engine – what’s new?

I have written a small presentation on what has changed in the rsyslog v8 engine. It takes a developer’s perspective, but is most probably also of interest for administrators who would like to understand why the v8 engine scales out much better for slow outputs like ElasticSearch or databases.

For developers, it also contains the basic know-how needed to successfully (and without pain!) upgrade a pre-v8 output plugin to v8.

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Samples for v8 module conversion

This is just a  blog post on where to find sample of converting modules to the v8 output module interface. Additional information will be upcoming within the next days. Stay tuned.

Please bear in mind that the v8 output module interface is not stable at this time. It will very likely change within the next weeks.

Right now, the rsyslog v8 compatibility doc has some information on the new interface. It is expected that it will remain the best source to get at least an overview of the required changes.

Actual samples are best found in git. As I have various levels of updates (from very minimal to full), you’ll probably find something for your liking. Very minimal change is required for message modification modules (assuming they were thread-safe in the first place), e.g. mmfields:

http://git.adiscon.com/?p=rsyslog.git;a=commitdiff;h=1c5a17241131129e9a1c184688500ad5b1383c28

It’s actually just adding the new plumbing. That’s all that’s usually required for message modification modules. Still, note the fundamental difference that the modules are run concurrently in v8, and as such must be reentrant and thread-safe (this requirement now applies to all output modules). Usually this is the case, but may be different depending on the processing done by the module in question (e.g. lookups to backend systems, libraries, global data – to name some of potential trouble spots).
omrelp is an example of a conversion to v8 that makes use of the new features:

If you browse git, the commit comments should help find more examples on a module-by-module basis.