log2json

Log2json lets you read, filter and send logs as JSON objects via Unix pipes. It is inspired by Logstash, and is meant to be compatible with it at the JSON event/record level so that it can easily work with Kibana.

Reading logs is done via a shell script(eg, tail) running in its own process. You then configure(see the syslog2json or the nginxlog2json script for examples) and run your filters in Ruby using the Log2Json module and its contained helper classes.

Log2Json reads from stdin the logs(one log record per line), parses the log lines into JSON records, and then serializes and writes the records to stdout, which then can be piped to another process for processing or sending it to somewhere else.

Currently, Log2json ships with a tail-log script that can be run as the input process. It's the same as using the Linux tail utility with the -v -F options except that it also tracks the positions(as the numbers of lines read from the beginning of the files) in a few files in the file system so that if the input process is interrupted, it can continue reading from where it left off next time if the files had been followed. This feature is similar to the sincedb feature in Logstash's file input.

Note: If you don't need the tracking feature(ie, you are fine with always tailling from the end of file with -v -F -n0), then you can just use the tail utility that comes with your Linux distribution.(Or more specifically, the tail from the GNU coreutils). Other versions of the tail utility may also work, but are not tested. The input protocol expected by Log2json is very simple and documented in the source code.

** The tail-log script uses a patched version of tail from the GNU coreutils package. A binary of the tail utility compiled for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is included with the Log2json gem. If the binary doesn't work for your distribution, then you'll need to get GNU coreutils-8.13, apply the patch(it can be found in the src/ directory of the installed gem), and then replace the bin/tail binary in the directory of the installed gem with your version of the binary. **

P.S. If you know of a way to configure and compile ONLY the tail program in coreutils, please let me know! The reason I'm not building tail post gem installation is that it takes too long to configure && make because that actually builds every utilties in coreutils.

For shipping logs to Redis, there's the lines2redis script that can be used as the output process in the pipe. For shipping logs from Redis to ElasticSearch, Log2json provides a redis2es script.

Finally here's an example of Log2json in action:

From a client machine:

tail-log /var/log/{sys,mail}log /var/log/{kern,auth}.log | syslog2json | queue=jsonlogs
flush_size=20
flush_interval=30
lines2redis host.to.redis.server 6379 0 # use redis DB 0

On the Redis server:

redis_queue=jsonlogs redis2es host.to.es.server

Resources that help writing log2json filters:

• look at log2json.rb source and example filters
• http://grokdebug.herokuapp.com/
• http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib-1.9.3/libdoc/date/rdoc/DateTime.html#method-i-strftime