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I have a customer who is using syslog running under Linux. We don't have any Linux infrastructure or skills in our org, so I found a Windows product called WinSysLog.

I was wondering, is Syslog a standard, so all products based on syslog run on the same rules, or are each Syslog applications differant?

JL.
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4 Answers4

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Yes, syslog is a standardised protocol, in RFC5424. However, it's not a trademark, so there's no reason why someone couldn't come up with something completely unrelated to the syslog protocol and call it WinSysLog (aiee! The camels!). You'll need to investigate whether it is compliant with the standard protocol.

womble
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    The winsyslog.com site lists "receive messages from your firewalls and routers like PIX, NetGear or IPTables" as the first bullet point, so it presumably supports standard syslog.

    JL, you might also want to look at Kiwi Syslog: http://www.kiwisyslog.com/

     – Gerald Combs Nov 19 '09 at 16:37
  • WinSyslog complies to all relevant standards including RFC 3164 and RFC 3195 (http://www.winsyslog.com/en/product/) – Tzury Bar Yochay Feb 11 '12 at 19:11
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Syslog is a standard and generally the application or library on the operating systems I've used that implement it are called syslog as well. Confusing huh? :)

See:

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3164.html

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3195.html

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc5424.html

Philip Reynolds
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I believe it is a standard, as there is an RFC

Community
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dsolimano
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It has been both a adhoc protocol, and a standard over time. Syslog did not become a standard until August of 2001. Before that there were several variants of syslog all descending from Eric Alman's original implementation in the 1980's. Not all of these variants were necessarily compatible. In August of 2001 the IETF issued a document that standardized syslog in RFC 3164. The Syslog protocol was subsequently improved up in RFC 5424 which obsoleted RFC 3164.

If you customer is on linux I would suggest you check out Syslog-NG and Rsyslog Both provide implimentations of Syslog that are compatible with WinSyslog.

Thomas Vincent
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