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Secure sending using rsyslog

This article describes how to manually configure rsyslog to send events to Devo using an encrypted and authenticated channel. This is the recommended procedure when you want to forward events over the internet, directly to the Devo Cloud. The configuration files are just the same as the ones described in Simple sending using rsyslog, but with the addition of some security-related settings.

Install rsyslog-gnutls

In order to use SSL/TLS with rsyslog, you need to install the rsyslog-gnutls package. 

If you are running Ubuntu 8.2 stable or later, you can skip this step because you will already have this package. Run rsyslogd -version to check what version of Ubuntu you are running.

In DEB environments

In RPM environments

In DEB environments

In RPM environments



apt install rsyslog-gnutls





yum install rsyslog-gnutls



Download and save the certificates

  1. Go to Administration → Credentials → X.509 certificates in the Devo web application. Download the Certificate, Private key, and Chain CA. Save them all to /etc/rsyslog.d/.

  2. Restrict the access permissions to these files to the syslog user:

    cd /etc/rsyslog.d/ chmod 640 ca.crt user.crt user.key chown :syslog ca.crt user.crt user.key -rw-r----- 1 root syslog 2090 Oct 24 13:02 ca.crt -rw-r----- 1 root syslog 1529 Oct 24 13:18 user.crt -rw-r----- 1 root syslog 1675 Oct 24 13:18 user.key

Create the Devo configuration files

You need to create two files in the /etc/rsyslog.d/ directory. The 00-devo.conf file contains general connection settings. The 49-devo.conf file is responsible for forwarding the events to the Devo Relay.

The 00-devo.conf file

This file contains general connection settings. Create it with the following contents.

The 49-devo.conf file

Add the 49-devo.conf file in your /etc/rsyslog.d/ and add the following lines immediately before the final destination rule in the file.

Again, the added/modified parameters are:

Parameter

Value

Parameter

Value

StreamDriver, StreamDriverMode, StreamDriverAuthMode

They must be gtls, 1 and x509/name, respectively.

StreamDriverPermittedPeers

It must have the same value as Target

Target

This is the host address for the Devo Cloud for the region you are using. It should be one of:

  • collector-us.devo.io

  • collector-us.devo.io

  • collector-es.devo.io

Restart rsyslog

After creating and saving the new files, restart rsyslog to activate the new configuration:

With the configuration activated, rsyslog should begin to forward events to your Devo Cloud.

Test the connection

You can make sure that the events are being forwarded to the Relay by using the logger command to write testing messages to the system log.

In the Devo web application, go to Data search. Open the box.unix data table to confirm that these logger events were forwarded and received correctly.



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