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op5 LogServer Technology : The Syslog Protocol and implementations
   
The Syslog Protocol and implementations
 
Usage
 
Syslog was originally written by Eric Allman as a part of his application sendmail but turned out to be so useful that it was turned into a project of it’s own in the 1980:s.
Syslog is not only a protocol, but it also refers to various syslog implementations such as the local syslog daemon that takes care of local logging on any UNIX compatible computer.
In 2001, RFC 3164 was published as an effort to unify syslog implementations.
Usage
 
On UNIX, most applications send their logs to the syslog process running on the same machine. This process then either stores the messages locally - in /var/log - or sends them to a syslog server for central storage.
All logging machines send their log data using TCP/IP to port 514 n the reciving logserver. Typically syslog uses UDP, but modern implementations such as op5 LogServer also support TCP. Most log servers simply store this data in text files, and retrieving historical data is a manual procedure and often impossible - unlike op5 LogServer where you have an easy-to-use grapichal interface with easy import from archives.
Note: sendmail was the de-facto standard email server for two decades.
Note: RFC for syslog available at http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3164