syslog-ng – The move to Trap25
I’m not sure if any of you know Linux or Unix for that matter, but there is a centralised logging system called syslog. It’s one of the oldest parts of *nix and is by modern standards, horrendously out of date. It logs system data and events to flat files… only flat files.
As part of Trap25 we need to move to a database system so our customers can see what is going on in terms of email blocking, quarantines and delivery. This means pushing log files to mysql. With the old syslog this is impossible.
I recently stumbled across syslog-ng which besides being a better replacement for syslog, can output logs directly into mysql, on local and remote servers. This is what we will be using, after some trials, on Trap25.