testbench

rsyslog 8.31.0 (v8-stable) released

Today, we release rsyslog 8.31. This is probably one of the biggest releases in the past couple of years. While it also offers great new functionality, what really important about it is the focus on further improved software quality. For a more detailed description, please read Rainer’s blog post. Detailed information about the huge list of changes is available in the changelog.

http://blog.gerhards.net/2017/11/rsyslog-831-important-release.html

The packages have received some notable changes as well. First off, we were able to implement the Redis output module as a separate package on Ubuntu 14.04 and newer. Also there was a dependency change for the ommongo module, thus it is now only available on Ubuntu 16.04 or newer, but not on CentOS/RHEL anymore. Platform restrictions are unavoidable right now due to dependency availability.

ChangeLog:

rsyslog 8.18.0 (v8-stable) released

We have released rsyslog 8.18.0.

This is mostly a bug-fixing release. Among the big number of fixes are a few additions to the testbench and some minor enhancements for several modules (like redis, omkafka, imfile) to provide more convenience.

To get a full overview over the changes, please take a look at the Changelog.
ChangeLog:

Changelog for 8.18.0 (v8-stable)

Version 8.18.0 [v8-stable] 2016-04-19

  • testbench: When running privdrop tests testbench tries to drop
    user to “rsyslog”, “syslog” or “daemon” when running as root and
    you don’t explict set RSYSLOG_TESTUSER environment variable.
    Make sure the unprivileged testuser can write into tests/ dir!
  • templates: add option to convert timestamps to UTC
    closes https://github.com/rsyslog/rsyslog/issues/730
  • omjournal: fix segfault (regression in 8.17.0)
  • imptcp: added AF_UNIX support
    Thanks to Nathan Brown for implementing this feature.
  • new template options
    • compressSpace
    • date-utc
  • redis: support for authentication
    Thanks to Manohar Ht for the patch
  • omkafka: makes kafka-producer on-HUP restart optional
    As of now, omkafka kills and re-creates kafka-producer on HUP. This
    is not always desirable. This change introduces an action param
    (reopenOnHup=”on|off”) which allows user to control re-cycling of
    kafka-producer.
    It defaults to on (for backward compatibility). Off allows user to
    ignore HUP as far as kafka-producer is concerned.
    Thanks to Janmejay Singh for implementing this feature
  • imfile: new “FreshStartTail” input parameter
    Thanks to Curu Wong for implementing this.
  • omjournal: fix libfastjson API issues
    This module accessed private data members of libfastjson
  • ommongodb: fix json API issues
    This module accessed private data members of libfastjson
  • testbench improvements (more tests and more thourough tests)
    among others:

    • tests for omjournal added
    • tests for KSI subsystem
    • tests for priviledge drop statements
    • basic test for RELP with TLS
    • some previously disabled tests have been re-enabled
  • dynamic stats subsystem: a couple of smaller changes
    they also involve the format, which is slightly incompatible to
    previous version. As this was out only very recently (last version),
    we considered this as acceptable.
    Thanks to Janmejay Singh for developing this.
  • foreach loop: now also iterates over objects (not just arrays)
    Thanks to Janmejay Singh for developing this.
  • improvements to the CI environment
  • enhancement: queue subsystem is more robst in regard to some corruptions
    It is now detected if a .qi file states that the queue contains more
    records than there are actually inside the queue files. Previously this
    resulted in an emergency switch to direct mode, now the problem is only
    reported but processing continues.
  • enhancement: Allow rsyslog to bind UDP ports even w/out specific
    interface being up at the moment.
    Alternatively, rsyslog could be ordered after networking, however,
    that might have some negative side effects. Also IP_FREEBIND is
    recommended by systemd documentation.
    Thanks to Nirmoy Das and Marius Tomaschewski for the patch.
  • cleanup: removed no longer needed json-c compatibility layer
    as we now always use libfastjson, we do not need to support old
    versions of json-c (libfastjson was based on the newest json-c
    version at the time of the fork, which is the newest in regard
    to the compatibility layer)
  • new External plugin for sending metrics to SPM Monitoring SaaS
    Thanks to Radu Gheorghe for the patch.
  • bugfix imfile: fix memory corruption bug when appending @cee
    Thanks to Brian Knox for the patch.
  • bugfix: memory misallocation if position.from and position.to is used
    a negative amount of memory is tried to be allocated if position.from
    is smaller than the buffer size (at least with json variables). This
    usually leads to a segfault.
    closes https://github.com/rsyslog/rsyslog/issues/915
  • bugfix: fix potential memleak in TCP allowed sender definition
    depending on circumstances, a very small leak could happen on each
    HUP. This was caused by an invalid macro definition which did not rule
    out side effects.
  • bugfix: $PrivDropToGroupID actually did a name lookup
    … instead of using the provided ID
  • bugfix: small memory leak in imfile
    Thanks to Tomas Heinrich for the patch.
  • bugfix: double free in jsonmesg template
    There has to be actual json data in the message (from mmjsonparse,
    mmnormalize, imjournal, …) to trigger the crash.
    Thanks to Tomas Heinrich for the patch.
  • bugfix: incorrect formatting of stats when CEE/Json format is used
    This lead to ill-formed json being generated
  • bugfix omfwd: new-style keepalive action parameters did not work
    due to being inconsistently spelled inside the code. Note that legacy
    parameters $keepalive… always worked
    see also: https://github.com/rsyslog/rsyslog/issues/916
    Thanks to Devin Christensen for alerting us and an analysis of the
    root cause.
  • bugfix: memory leaks in logctl utility
    Detected by clang static analyzer. Note that these leaks CAN happen in
    practice and may even be pretty large. This was probably never detected
    because the tool is not often used.
  • bugfix omrelp: fix segfault if no port action parameter was given
    closes https://github.com/rsyslog/rsyslog/issues/911
  • bugfix imtcp: Messages not terminated by a NL were discarded
    … upon connection termination.
    Thanks to Tomas Heinrich for the patch.

Changelog for 8.6.0 (v8-stable)

Version 8.6.0 [v8-stable] 2014-12-02
NOTE: This version also incorporates all changes and enhancements made for
v8.5.0, but in a stable release. For details see immediately below.

  • configuration-setting rsyslogd command line options deprecated
    For most of them, there are now proper configuration objects. Some few will be completely dropped if nobody insists on them.  Additional info at
    http://blog.gerhards.net/2014/11/phasing-out-legacy-command-line-options.html
  • new and enhanced plugins for 0mq. These are currently experimantal.
    Thanks to Brian Knox who contributed the modules and is their author.
  • empty rulesets have been permitted. They no longer raise a syntax error.
  • add parameter -N3 to enable config check of partial config file
    Use for config include files. Disables checking if any action exists at
    all.
  • rsyslogd -e option has finally been removed
    It is deprectated since many years.
  • testbench improvements
    Testbench is now more robust and has additional tests.
  • testbench is now by default disabled
    To enable it, use –enable-testbench. This was done as the testbench now does better checking if required modules are present and this in turn would lead to configure error messages where non previously were if we would leave –enable-testbench on by default. Thus we have turned it off. This should not be an issue for those few testbench users.
  • add new RainerScript functions warp() and replace()
    Thanks to Singh Janmejay for the patch.
  • mmnormalize can now also work on a variable
    Thanks to Singh Janmejay for the patch.
  • new property date options for day ordinal and week number
    Thanks to github user arrjay for the patch
  • remove –enable-zlib configure option, we always require it
    It’s hard to envision a system without zlib, so we turn this off
    closes https://github.com/rsyslog/rsyslog/issues/76
  • slight source-tree restructuring: contributed modules are now in their own ./contrib directory. The idea is to make it clearer to the end user which plugins are supported by the rsyslog project (those in ./plugins).
  • bugfix: imudp makes rsyslog hang on shutdown when more than 1 thread used
    closes https://github.com/rsyslog/rsyslog/issues/126
  • bugfix: not all files closed on auto-backgrounding startup
    This could happen when not running under systemd. Some low-numbered fds were not closed in that case.
  • bugfix: typo in queue configuration parameter made parameter unusable
    Thanks to Bojan Smojver for the patch.
  • bugfix: unitialized buffer off-by-one error in hostname generation
    The DNS cache used uninitialized memory, which could lead to invalid hostname generation.
    Thanks to Jarrod Sayers for alerting us and provinding analysis and patch recommendations.
  • bugfix imuxsock: possible segfault when SysSock.Use=”off”
    Thanks to alexjfisher for reporting this issue.
    closes https://github.com/rsyslog/rsyslog/issues/140
  • bugfix: RainerScript: invalid ruleset names were accepted during ruleset defintion, but could of course not be used when e.g. calling a ruleset.
    IMPORTANT: this may cause existing configurations to error out on start, as they invalid names could also be used e.g. when assigning rulesets.
  • bugfix: some module entry points were not called for all modules callbacks like endCnfLoad() were primarily being called for input modules. This has been corrected. Note that this bugfix has some regression potential.
  • bugfix omlibdbi: connection was taken down in wrong thread
    This could have consequences depending on the driver being used. In general, it looks more like a cosmetic issue. For example, with MySQL it lead to a small memory but also an annoying message about a thread not properly torn down.
  • imttcp was removed because it was an incompleted experimental module
  • pmrfc3164sd because it was a custom module nobody used
    We used to keep this as a sample inside the tree, but whoever wants to look at it can check in older versions inside git
  • omoracle was removed because it was orphaned and did not build/work for quite some years and nobody was interested in fixing it

The rsyslog testbench

In this video Rainer will give a quick rundown what the rsyslog testbench is and how tests can be added, as well as how single tests can be run without a full “make check”.

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Why does the rsyslog testbench sometimes fail?

Rsyslog contains a set of automatted tests, the so-called “testbench”. It is invoked via the standard method of “make check” and “make distcheck”. Since its introduction in version 3, the testbench has been continously enhanced and extended. It now contains around 150 individual tests, which sum up to around 80 tests from the autoconf point of view (some autoconf tests run a couple of subtests, thus the difference in number). The testbench has been proven to be very useful and caught numerous problems before new code was released.

But the testbench is not perfect, and it may sometimes fail without any actual problem. There are two reasons for this. One is that the test require a very specific environment. For example, some parser based tests assume that the system the test is run on is configured to be named “localhost.localdomain” (the default for many test deployments). This needs to be the case because there currently is no way in rsyslog to overwrite the local hostname. Some parser tests use malformed messages, in which case (as of the RFC), the local system name must be used. As such, we need to have a specific system name set in order to prove the results. In the long term, we’ll add the capability to overwrite system name inside rsyslog, but it does not make sense to create a dirty trick just for testbench use. So this needs to wait until we get to it as part of regular development. Note that a similar issues may exist at other places. An obvious one is the database tests, where we need pre-created users, databases, tables etc in order to run the tests.

The other issue is a bit more subtle. The syslog protocol is simply, without App-Layer acknowledgments. This makes it hard to know when rsyslog has received a while bunch of test data. That in turn makes it hard to definitely say when all test data has arrived and an instance can be shut down. So the whole process is a bit racy. To “solve” this, we use some wait periods in tests affected by this problem. However, longer wait periods mean longer test bench runtime and this reduces our development productivity. So we use wait time that usually does the job, but may fail under some circumstances (most notably when –enable-debug is set). This can affect a couple of TCP-based tests (like imtcp_conndrop.sh and similar ones). We have not yet a good idea what a clean solution to this problem is, where “clean” means that it a) always works and b) does no introduce unnecessary code complexity under non-testbench runs.

Given these problems, some care must be taken interpreting testbench results. Most importantly, a fail does not necessarily mean that things are actually broken. It merely means that one needs to look at the actual test and check a) why it fails and b) if it fails repeatedly. Especially the “racy” test tend to occasionally fail without any real problem. We’ve also seen them to fail consistenly on some platforms, simply because our timing assumptions are not valid there (Solaris was one example where we needed to adjust our overall wait periods).

So testbench results need to be taken with a grain of salt, and require interpretation. We know this is inconvenient for occasional users, but it is the best compromise we currently can offer.

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