loggen - Man Page

loggen [options]target [port]

NOTE: The loggen application is distributed with the syslog-ng system logging application, and is usually part of the syslog-ng package. The latest version of the syslog-ng application is available at the official syslog-ng website^[1].

This manual page is only an abstract, for the complete documentation of syslog-ng, see The syslog-ng Administrator Guide^[2].

The loggen application is tool to test and stress-test your syslog server and the connection to the server. It can send syslog messages to the server at a specified rate, using a number of connection types and protocols, including TCP, UDP, and unix domain sockets. The messages can be generated automatically (repeating the PADDstring over and over), or read from a file or the standard input.

When loggen finishes sending the messages, it displays the following statistics:

• average rate: Average rate the messages were sent in messages/second.
• count: The total number of messages sent.
• time: The time required to send the messages in seconds.
• average message size: The average size of the sent messages in bytes.
• bandwidth: The average bandwidth used for sending the messages in kilobytes/second.

--active-connections <number-of-connections>

Number of connections loggen will use to send messages to the destination. This option is usable only when using TCP or TLS connections to the destination. Default value: 1

The loggen utility waits until every connection is established before starting to send messages. See also the --idle-connections option.

--csv or -C

Send the statistics of the sent messages to stdout as CSV. This can be used for plotting the message rate.

--dgram or -D

Use datagram socket (UDP or unix-dgram) to send the messages to the target. Requires the --inet option as well.

--dont-parse or -d

Do not parse the lines read from the input files, send them as received.

--help or -h

Display a brief help message.

--idle-connections <number-of-connections>

Number of idle connections loggen will establish to the destination. Note that loggen will not send any messages on idle connections, but the connection is kept open using keep-alive messages. This option is usable only when using TCP or TLS connections to the destination. See also the --active-connections option. Default value: 0

--inet or -i

Use the TCP (by default) or UDP (when used together with the --dgram option) protocol to send the messages to the target.

--interval <seconds> or -I <seconds>

The number of seconds loggen will run. Default value: 10

Note
Note that when the --interval and --number are used together, loggen will send messages until the period set in --interval expires or the amount of messages set in --number is reached, whichever happens first.

--ipv6 or -6

Specify the destination using its IPv6 address. Note that the destination must have a real IPv6 address.

--loop-reading or -l

Read the file specified in --read-file option in loop: loggen will start reading from the beginning of the file when it reaches the end of the file.

--number <number-of-messages> or -n <number-of-messages>

Number of messages to generate.

Note
Note that when the --interval and --number are used together, loggen will send messages until the period set in --interval expires or the amount of messages set in --number is reached, whichever happens first.

--no-framing or -F

Do not use the framing of the IETF-syslog protocol style, even if the syslog-proto option is set.

--quiet or -Q

Output statistics only when the execution of loggen is finished. If not set, the statistics are displayed every second.

--permanent or -T

Keep sending logs indefinitely, without time limit.

--rate <message/second> or -r <message/second>

The number of messages generated per second for every active connection. Default value: 1000

--read-file <filename> or -R <filename>

Read the messages from a file and send them to the target. See also the --skip-tokens option.

Specify - as the input file to read messages from the standard input (stdio). Note that when reading messages from the standard input, loggen can only use a single thread. The -R - parameters must be placed at end of command, like: loggen 127.0.0.1 1061 --read-file -

--sdata <data-to-send> or -p <data-to-send>

Send the argument of the --sdata option as the SDATA part of IETF-syslog (RFC5424 formatted) messages. Use it together with the --syslog-proto option. For example: --sdata "[test name=\"value\"]

--size <message-size> or -s <message-size>

The size of a syslog message in bytes. Default value: 256. Minimum value: 127 bytes, maximum value: 8192 bytes.

--skip-tokens <number>

Skips the specified number of space-separated tokens (words) at the beginning of every line. For example, if the messages in the file look like foo bar message, --skip-tokens 2 skips the foo bar part of the line, and sends only the message part. Works only when used together with the --read-file parameter. Default value: 0

--stream or -S

Use a stream socket (TCP or unix-stream) to send the messages to the target.

--syslog-proto or -P

Use the new IETF-syslog message format as specified in RFC5424. By default, loggen uses the legacy BSD-syslog message format (as described in RFC3164). See also the --no-framing option.

--unix </path/to/socket> or -x </path/to/socket>

Use a UNIX domain socket to send the messages to the target.

--use-ssl or -U

Use an SSL-encrypted channel to send the messages to the target. Note that it is not possible to check the certificate of the target, or to perform mutual authentication.

--version or -V

Display version number of syslog-ng.

The following command generates 100 messages per second for ten minutes, and sends them to port 2010 of the localhost via TCP. Each message is 300 bytes long.

loggen --stream --size 300 --rate 100 --interval 600 127.0.0.1 2010

The following command is similar to the one above, but uses the UDP protocol.

loggen --inet --dgram --size 300 --rate 100 --interval 600 127.0.0.1 2010

Send a single message on TCP6 to the ::1 IPv6 address, port 1061:

loggen --ipv6 --number 1 ::1 1061

Send a single message on UDP6 to the ::1 IPv6 address, port 1061:

loggen --ipv6 --dgram --number 1 ::1 1061

Send a single message using a unix domain-socket:

loggen --unix --stream --number 1 </path/to/socket>

Read messages from the standard input (stdio) and send them to the localhost:

loggen 127.0.0.1 1061 --read-file -

/usr/local/bin/loggen

syslog-ng.conf(5)

Note

For the detailed documentation of see The 4.8 Administrator Guide^[2]

If you experience any problems or need help with syslog-ng, visit the syslog-ng mailing list^[3].

For news and notifications about of syslog-ng, visit the syslog-ng blogs^[4].

This manual page was written by the Balabit Documentation Team <documentation@balabit.com>.

1. the official syslog-ng website
   https://www.balabit.com/log-management
2. The syslog-ng Administrator Guide
   https://www.syslog-ng.com/technical-documents/doc/syslog-ng-open-source-edition/3.37/administration-guide
3. syslog-ng mailing list
   https://lists.balabit.hu/mailman/listinfo/syslog-ng
4. syslog-ng blogs
   https://syslog-ng.org/blogs/