Syslog-ng

syslog-ng allows you to flexibly collect, parse, classify, rewrite and correlate logs from across your infrastructure and store or route them to log analysis tools.

Image details

Pulls: 1.6M

Architectures: amd64, arm64

Image size: 31 MB

Latest: 4.11.0

User: linuxserverci

Created: May 26, 2021

Updated: 4 days ago

Status: active

Configuration

Type

Container

Platform

linux

Image

linuxserver/syslog-ng:latest

Ports

514:5514/udp601:6601/tcp6514:6514/tcp

Volumes

/config : /srv/lsio/syslog-ng/config/var/log : /var/log

Env vars

PUID=1000PGID=1000TZ=Etc/UTCLOG_TO_STDOUT=

Restart

unless-stopped

Template by technorabilia

Notes

Portainer App Templates by Technorabilia, based on data provided by LinuxServer.io.

Ensure to create the following volume directories on the host file system, or modify the paths in the volume mapping section under the advanced options below, as needed.

mkdir -p /srv/lsio/syslog-ng/config

Installation

Ensure both Docker and Portainer are installed, and up-to-date
Log into your Portainer web UI
Under Settings → App Templates, paste the below URL
Head to Home → App Templates, and the list of apps will show up
Select the app you wish to deploy, fill in any config options, and hit Deploy

Template Import URL

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Lissy93/portainer-templates/main/templates.json

Show Me

docker run -d --name Syslog-ng \
  -p 514:5514/udp \
  -p 601:6601/tcp \
  -p 6514:6514/tcp \
  -e 'PUID=1000' \
  -e 'PGID=1000' \
  -e 'TZ=Etc/UTC' \
  -e 'LOG_TO_STDOUT=' \
  -v /srv/lsio/syslog-ng/config:/config \
  -v /var/log:/var/log \
  --restart=unless-stopped \
  linuxserver/syslog-ng:latest

Save this file as compose.yaml and run docker compose up -d
Use this only as a guide.

services:
  syslog-ng:
    image: linuxserver/syslog-ng:latest
    ports:
      - 514:5514/udp
      - 601:6601/tcp
      - 6514:6514/tcp
    volumes:
      - /srv/lsio/syslog-ng/config:/config
      - /var/log:/var/log
    environment:
      PUID: '1000'
      PGID: '1000'
      TZ: Etc/UTC
      LOG_TO_STDOUT: ''
    restart: unless-stopped

Save this file as syslog-ng-stack.yml, then from a manager node, run docker stack deploy -c syslog-ng-stack.yml syslog-ng

version: '3.8'
services:
  syslog-ng:
    image: linuxserver/syslog-ng:latest
    ports:
      - 514:5514/udp
      - 601:6601/tcp
      - 6514:6514/tcp
    volumes:
      - /srv/lsio/syslog-ng/config:/config
      - /var/log:/var/log
    environment:
      PUID: '1000'
      PGID: '1000'
      TZ: Etc/UTC
      LOG_TO_STDOUT: ''
    deploy:
      restart_policy:
        condition: any

Save each file below into a folder, then run kubectl apply -f .
Written for k3s, but works on any cluster: bind mounts use hostPath, named volumes get a persistent volume claim, and ports are exposed via a LoadBalancer service.

`syslog-ng-deployment.yaml`

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: syslog-ng
  labels:
    app: syslog-ng
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: syslog-ng
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: syslog-ng
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: syslog-ng
          image: linuxserver/syslog-ng:latest
          env:
            - name: PUID
              value: '1000'
            - name: PGID
              value: '1000'
            - name: TZ
              value: Etc/UTC
            - name: LOG_TO_STDOUT
              value: ''
          ports:
            - containerPort: 5514
              protocol: UDP
            - containerPort: 6601
              protocol: TCP
            - containerPort: 6514
              protocol: TCP
          volumeMounts:
            - name: syslog-ng-data-0
              mountPath: /config
            - name: syslog-ng-data-1
              mountPath: /var/log
      volumes:
        - name: syslog-ng-data-0
          hostPath:
            path: /srv/lsio/syslog-ng/config
        - name: syslog-ng-data-1
          hostPath:
            path: /var/log

`syslog-ng-service.yaml`

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: syslog-ng
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  selector:
    app: syslog-ng
  ports:
    - name: 514-udp
      port: 514
      targetPort: 5514
      protocol: UDP
    - name: 601-tcp
      port: 601
      targetPort: 6601
      protocol: TCP
    - name: 6514-tcp
      port: 6514
      targetPort: 6514
      protocol: TCP

Save this file as ~/.config/containers/systemd/syslog-ng.container

[Unit]
Description=Syslog-ng

[Container]
Image=linuxserver/syslog-ng:latest
ContainerName=syslog-ng
PublishPort=514:5514/udp
PublishPort=601:6601/tcp
PublishPort=6514:6514/tcp
Environment=PUID=1000
Environment=PGID=1000
Environment=TZ=Etc/UTC
Environment=LOG_TO_STDOUT=
Volume=/srv/lsio/syslog-ng/config:/config
Volume=/var/log:/var/log

[Service]
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Then reload systemd and start the service:

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user start syslog-ng

For a system-wide service, use /etc/containers/systemd/ and drop --user.

For more installation options, see the Documentation in our GitHub repo

The LinuxServer.io team brings you another container release featuring:

regular and timely application updates
easy user mappings (PGID, PUID)
custom base image with s6 overlay
weekly base OS updates with common layers across the entire LinuxServer.io ecosystem to minimise space usage, down time and bandwidth
regular security updates

Find us at:

Blog - all the things you can do with our containers including How-To guides, opinions and much more!
Discord - realtime support / chat with the community and the team.
Discourse - post on our community forum.
GitHub - view the source for all of our repositories.
Open Collective - please consider helping us by either donating or contributing to our budget

linuxserver/syslog-ng

syslog-ng allows you to flexibly collect, parse, classify, rewrite and correlate logs from across your infrastructure and store or route them to log analysis tools.

Supported Architectures

We utilise the docker manifest for multi-platform awareness. More information is available from docker here and our announcement here.
Simply pulling lscr.io/linuxserver/syslog-ng:latest should retrieve the correct image for your arch, but you can also pull specific arch images via tags.
The architectures supported by this image are:
| Architecture | Available | Tag | | :----: | :----: | ---- | | x86-64 | ✅ | amd64-\ | | arm64 | ✅ | arm64v8-\ |

Application Setup

Edit /config/syslog-ng.conf to configure your logging sources and destinations.
The application pid, control file, etc. are all kept in /config so when using tools such as syslog-ng-ctl you need to specify the path e.g. syslog-ng-ctl reload -c /config/syslog-ng.ctl
More info at syslog-ng.

Read-Only Operation

This image can be run with a read-only container filesystem. For details please read the docs.

Non-Root Operation

This image can be run with a non-root user. For details please read the docs.

Usage

To help you get started creating a container from this image you can either use docker-compose or the docker cli.
>!NOTE >Unless a parameter is flagged as 'optional', it is mandatory and a value must be provided.

docker-compose (recommended, click here for more info)

---
services:
  syslog-ng:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/syslog-ng:latest
    container_name: syslog-ng
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Etc/UTC
      - LOG_TO_STDOUT= #optional
    volumes:
      - /path/to/syslog-ng/config:/config
      - /path/to/log:/var/log #optional
    ports:
      - 514:5514/udp
      - 601:6601/tcp
      - 6514:6514/tcp
    restart: unless-stopped

docker cli (click here for more info)

docker run -d \
  --name=syslog-ng \
  -e PUID=1000 \
  -e PGID=1000 \
  -e TZ=Etc/UTC \
  -e LOG_TO_STDOUT= `#optional` \
  -p 514:5514/udp \
  -p 601:6601/tcp \
  -p 6514:6514/tcp \
  -v /path/to/syslog-ng/config:/config \
  -v /path/to/log:/var/log `#optional` \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  lscr.io/linuxserver/syslog-ng:latest

Parameters

Containers are configured using parameters passed at runtime (such as those above). These parameters are separated by a colon and indicate <external>:<internal> respectively. For example, -p 8080:80 would expose port 80 from inside the container to be accessible from the host's IP on port 8080 outside the container.
| Parameter | Function | | :----: | --- | | -p 514:5514/udp | Syslog UDP | | -p 601:6601/tcp | Syslog TCP | | -p 6514:6514/tcp | Syslog TLS | | -e PUID=1000 | for UserID - see below for explanation | | -e PGID=1000 | for GroupID - see below for explanation | | -e TZ=Etc/UTC | specify a timezone to use, see this list. | | -e LOG_TO_STDOUT= | If set to true container will log to stdout, otherwise will log to /config/log/. | | -v /config | Stores config and application files | | -v /var/log | Stores logs collected by the syslog-ng service | | --read-only=true | Run container with a read-only filesystem. Please read the docs. | | --user=1000:1000 | Run container with a non-root user. Please read the docs. |

Environment variables from files (Docker secrets)

You can set any environment variable from a file by using a special prepend FILE__.
As an example:

-e FILE__MYVAR=/run/secrets/mysecretvariable

Will set the environment variable MYVAR based on the contents of the /run/secrets/mysecretvariable file.

Umask for running applications

For all of our images we provide the ability to override the default umask settings for services started within the containers using the optional -e UMASK=022 setting. Keep in mind umask is not chmod it subtracts from permissions based on it's value it does not add. Please read up here before asking for support.

User / Group Identifiers

When using volumes (-v flags), permissions issues can arise between the host OS and the container, we avoid this issue by allowing you to specify the user PUID and group PGID.
Ensure any volume directories on the host are owned by the same user you specify and any permissions issues will vanish like magic.
In this instance PUID=1000 and PGID=1000, to find yours use id your_user as below:

id your_user

Example output:

uid=1000(your_user) gid=1000(your_user) groups=1000(your_user)

Docker Mods

We publish various Docker Mods to enable additional functionality within the containers. The list of Mods available for this image (if any) as well as universal mods that can be applied to any one of our images can be accessed via the dynamic badges above.

Support Info

Shell access whilst the container is running:

```bash
docker exec -it syslog-ng /bin/bash
```

To monitor the logs of the container in realtime:

```bash
docker logs -f syslog-ng
```

Container version number:

```bash
docker inspect -f '{{ index .Config.Labels "build_version" }}' syslog-ng
```

Image version number:

```bash
docker inspect -f '{{ index .Config.Labels "build_version" }}' lscr.io/linuxserver/syslog-ng:latest
```

Updating Info

Most of our images are static, versioned, and require an image update and container recreation to update the app inside. With some exceptions (noted in the relevant readme.md), we do not recommend or support updating apps inside the container. Please consult the Application Setup section above to see if it is recommended for the image.
Below are the instructions for updating containers:

Via Docker Compose

Update images:

* All images:

    ```bash
    docker-compose pull
    ```

* Single image:

    ```bash
    docker-compose pull syslog-ng
    ```

Update containers:

* All containers:

    ```bash
    docker-compose up -d
    ```

* Single container:

    ```bash
    docker-compose up -d syslog-ng
    ```

You can also remove the old dangling images:

```bash
docker image prune
```

Via Docker Run

Update the image:

```bash
docker pull lscr.io/linuxserver/syslog-ng:latest
```

Stop the running container:

```bash
docker stop syslog-ng
```

Delete the container:

```bash
docker rm syslog-ng
```

Recreate a new container with the same docker run parameters as instructed above (if mapped correctly to a host folder, your /config folder and settings will be preserved)
You can also remove the old dangling images:

```bash
docker image prune
```

Image Update Notifications - Diun (Docker Image Update Notifier)

>!TIP >We recommend Diun for update notifications. Other tools that automatically update containers unattended are not recommended or supported.

Building locally

If you want to make local modifications to these images for development purposes or just to customize the logic:

git clone https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-syslog-ng.git
cd docker-syslog-ng
docker build \
  --no-cache \
  --pull \
  -t lscr.io/linuxserver/syslog-ng:latest .

The ARM variants can be built on x8664 hardware and vice versa using lscr.io/linuxserver/qemu-static
docker run --rm --privileged lscr.io/linuxserver/qemu-static --reset

Once registered you can define the dockerfile to use with -f Dockerfile.aarch64.
Versions
05.07.26: - Rebase to Alpine 3.24.
26.12.25: - Rebase to Alpine 3.23.
05.07.25: - Rebase to Alpine 3.22.
20.12.24: - Rebase to Alpine 3.21.
24.09.24: - Add opt to log to stdout.
24.05.24: - Rebase to Alpine 3.20.
31.01.24: - Rebase to Alpine 3.19.
11.06.23: - Rebase to Alpine 3.18, deprecate armhf.
10.01.23: - Add paho-mqtt-c library as required by the syslog-ng documentation
30.12.22: - Rebase to Alpine 3.17, add libdbi-drivers for SQL support.
01.10.22: - Rebase to Alpine 3.16, migrate to s6v3.
18.12.21: - Rebase to Alpine 3.15.
01.07.21: - Rebase to Alpine 3.14.
26.05.21: - Initial release.

Serve Syslog-ng on your own domain behind Caddy, Nginx or Traefik. Fill in your domain and copy the result. It's a starting point, some apps need their own base URL or extra headers set too.

Proxy Domain App port Upstream

Proxying syslog-ng.example.com to http://Syslog-ng:6601

Add this to your Caddyfile

syslog-ng.example.com {
	reverse_proxy http://Syslog-ng:6601
}

Check the logs first

Nine times out of ten the logs tell you exactly what went wrong.

In Portainer, go to Containers, click the container, then Logs. Or run docker logs Syslog-ng
Exit codes help too: 137 means killed, usually out of memory. 126 or 127 means the command inside the image is broken.

Port already in use

If deployment fails with "Bind for 0.0.0.0:514 failed: port is already allocated", something else on your server is using that port.

Find what's using it: sudo ss -tlnp | grep :514
Stop the other service, or pick a different host port. In 514:5514 only the left number is yours to change, the right one belongs to the app.

Running but the page won't load

The container is up but nothing appears in your browser.

Use your server's real IP: http://your-server-ip:601. The 0.0.0.0 link Portainer shows isn't a real address.
Give it a minute after first deploy, Syslog-ng can take a while to initialise.
Make sure your firewall allows the port, e.g. sudo ufw allow 601

Permission denied on volumes

If the logs show "permission denied", the app can't write to its data folder on the host.

Fix the ownership: sudo chown -R 1000:1000 /srv/lsio/syslog-ng/config (and the same for the other mapped folders)
Or set the PUID and PGID variables (defaults 1000:1000) to match your own user, found with id $USER

Image won't pull

Test the pull directly on the host: docker pull linuxserver/syslog-ng:latest

"manifest unknown" means the tag no longer exists. This template uses latest, so try pinning a specific version instead.
"toomanyrequests" is the Docker Hub rate limit. Log in with docker login to raise it.
"no space left on device" means a full disk. Reclaim space with docker system prune

"exec format error"

This means the image was built for a different CPU architecture than your server.

This image supports: amd64, arm64
Check yours with uname -m: x86_64 is amd64, aarch64 is arm64. Raspberry Pi and other ARM boards are the usual culprits.

Container keeps restarting

The unless-stopped restart policy relaunches the app after every crash, so the real error can scroll past.

Check the logs right after a restart, the last few lines before it died are the useful ones.
Get the exit code with docker inspect Syslog-ng --format '{{.State.ExitCode}}'
Still stuck? Redeploy once with the restart policy set to no so the failure stays visible.

Required settings are blank

LOG_TO_STDOUT has no default value, and Syslog-ng may crash or misbehave if left empty.

Fill it in on the deploy screen before hitting deploy.

Raise an issue

Found something which isn't working as it should? Here's how to report it.

Bug within the app: Open an issue within Syslog-ng's repo
Template not working: Open an issue on technorabilia/portainer-templates
This website not working: Open an issue on lissy93/portainer-templates

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