As a follow-up to my RPM blog last week, here are instructions installing syslog-ng Open Source Edition (syslog-ng OSE) on the Debian / Ubuntu version. If you read my previous blog, skip to the installation part at the end, otherwise: read on.

The syslog-ng application is part of all major Linux distributions, and you can usually install syslog-ng from the official repositories. If you use just the core functionality of syslog-ng, use the package in your distribution repository (apt-get install syslog-ng), and you can stop reading here. However, if you want to use the features of newer syslog-ng versions (for example, send log messages to Elasticsearch or Apache Kafka), you have to either compile the syslog-ng from source, or install it from unofficial repositories. This post explains you how to do that.

For information on all platforms that could be relevant to you, check out all my blog posts about installing syslog-ng on major Linux distributions, collected in one place.

In addition, syslog-ng is also available as a Docker image. To learn more, read our tutorial about logging in Docker using syslog-ng.

Why is syslog-ng in my distribution so old?

Most Linux distributions have a number of limitations. Of course these are not limitations in the traditional sense, rather ways of quality control.

• Distribution releases are done on a schedule: after a release candidate is out, software in the distribution cannot be upgraded. This ensures that a known state of the distribution can be tested and polished, and external applications are installed on a stable base. But it also means that distributions include an older version of syslog-ng, which lags behind a few minor or major versions.
• The use of bundled libraries is often prohibited. Some functionality of syslog-ng is only available in bundled libraries, either because it requires a modified version, or requires a version that is not yet available in distributions.
• Distributions may lack certain depencencies (tools, sources) that are required to enable certain features in syslog-ng. This makes compiling Java-based destinations nearly impossible, as most tools and dependencies are missing, or have a different version than required by syslog-ng.

All of this means that syslog-ng in distributions is locked to a given version with a limited feature set from half a year to up to half a decade, depending on the release cycle. Thus, the included syslog-ng version can be five years old.

If you need a feature or fix not available for some reason in the distribution package, you can either compile syslog-ng for yourself or use one of the unofficial syslog-ng DEB repositories. Using the repositories is usually easier 

Where to find new DEB packages of syslog-ng?

We, the developers of syslog-ng maintain several unofficial repositories for different distributions. The natural question is: why are these called “unofficial”? The short answer is: these packages are not officially supported by Balabit or a Linux distribution. If you need tested binaries, commercial support with guaranteed response times and other goodies, you either need a commercial Linux distribution, which includes syslog-ng (see possible problems above), or the commercial syslog-ng Premium Edition developed by Balabit. We support the unofficial repositories on a best effort level, which is sometimes quicker than commercial support, but most often is not

Looking for RPM packages? Check my previous blog covering RPM packages.

Which package to install?

You can use many sources and destinations in syslog-ng. The majority of these require additional dependencies to be installed. If all of the features would be packaged into a single package, installing syslog-ng would also install dozens of other smaller and larger dependencies, including such behemoths as Java. This is why the syslog-ng-core package includes only the core functionality, whereas features requiring additional dependencies are available as sub-packages. The most popular sub-package is syslog-ng-mod-elastic, which installs the Java-based Elasticsearch destination driver, but there are many others as well. The command “apt-cache search syslog-ng” will list you all the possibilities.

Install syslog-ng on Ubuntu or Debian

At the time of writing, the latest syslog-ng version is 3.19 and Debian and Ubuntu packages are available on the Open Build Service at https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/home:laszlo_budai:syslog-ng . The installation steps below are for Ubuntu 17.04, but you can use them with minimal modifications in any other supported distributions, just change the URLs. You can see the list of supported distributions at the upper right side of the page, when you open the above URL.

1. Download and install the release key:

wget -qO - http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/laszlo_budai:/syslog-ng/xUbuntu_17.04/Release.key | sudo apt-key add -

2. Add the repository containing the latest unofficial build of syslog-ng to the APT sources. Under the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ directory create a new file, for example syslog-ng-obs.list. Add the following line to this file:

deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/laszlo_budai:/syslog-ng/xUbuntu_17.04 ./

Run the following command:

apt-get update

3. Install syslog-ng and any of its subpackages:

apt-get install syslog-ng-core

Last year’s Christmas present to my oldest boy (2017), started to misbehave in such a way that made playing it no longer enjoyable. This GB Boy Colour, a Game Boy Color clone, likely not made with the highest quality components started to have switch problems. It either wouldn’t turn on or turn on and immediately … Continue reading GB Boy Colour Repair →

For quite some time, I have been noodling around an idea about adding a “new” Linux machine to my home with a specific purpose and requirements in mind. The primary purpose of this machine would be to enhance my organization and reduce wasted time. I also had a very specific form factor requirement for my … Continue reading openSUSE Tumbleweed on Dell Inspiron 20 3048 All-In-One Desktop →

In participating in with a virtual LUG, BDLL, I decided to give Enso OS a try, on Virtual Machine, of course. In recognizing that there can be Virtual Machine-isms, I am going to ignore any issues I had with that and just relay the overall usability of this distribution. I am evaluating Enso OS from … Continue reading Enso OS | Review from an openSUSE User →

Kmail, the mail program of the KDE project, does not come alone. Also included is an address book, an appointment manager, a notification service and much more. The whole thing is kept running by Akonadi, the backend of the whole KDE PIM Suite.

By default Akonadi runs with MySQL as database system, but this has caused quite some fuss again and again. So I looked around for alternatives and ended up at PostgreSQL next to SQLite. Unfortunately there were some negative reports about SQLite and the implementation in Akonadi, so I sorted it out directly.
I had no experience with PostgreSQL, but was able to set it up quite quickly. Connecting Akonadi and Kmail to PostgreSQL was also easy.

All steps under openSUSE

First we install all necessary packages for PostgreSQL and the Akonadi connection:

# zypper in postgresql-server libQt5Sql5-postgresql

Activate and start PostgreSQL Server:

# systemctl enable --now postgresql

Create Postgres user and database:

# su - postgres
$ createuser <your-username>
$ psql postgres
postgres=# alter user <your-username> createdb;
postgres=# \q;
# exit

Then we set up the database access with your regular user account:

$ createdb akonadi-<your-username>

Now we stop Akonadi and delete or move the settings. This is especially important if you have already had started Akonadi!

$ akonadictl stop
$ rm -rf ~/.local/share/akonadi

We adjust the connection to the database server in the file ~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc as follows:

[%General]
Driver=QPSQL

[QPSQL]
Host=/tmp/akonadi-<your-username>.hash
InitDbPath=/usr/bin/initdb
Name=akonadi
Options=
ServerPath=/usr/bin/pg_ctl
StartServer=true

Finally restart Akonadi and you are ready to go:

$ akonadictl start

Last night, the linux.org DNS was hijacked and redirected to a page that doxed her. Coraline is doing extremely valuable work with the Contributor Covenant code of conduct, which many free software projects have adopted already.

Coraline has been working for years in making free software, and computer technology circles in general, a welcome place for underrepresented groups.

I hope Coraline stays safe and strong. You can support her directly on Patreon.

My first file manager on Linux was Konqueror. Compared to anything I at that time it was by far the best thing I’ve ever used. So many options, so many customization features and so many ways to find out information about your files. Looking at it today, I still think it is still by far … Continue reading Konqueror is Still Awesome →

I just realized that I forgot to publish my presentation from this year's GUADEC. Sorry, here it is!

You can also get the ODP file for the presentation. This is released under a CC-BY-SA license.

This is the video of the presentation.

Update Dec/06: Keen readers spotted an incorrect use of opaque pointers; I've updated the example code in the presentation to match Jordan's fix with the recommended usage. That merge request has an interesting conversation on FFI esoterica, too.

I am working on another project and whilst doing so, I was reintroduced to a kind of irritating problem with Desktop Linux. Nothing huge, just annoying enough. Formatting Removable or USB media. This is one area where I agree with the statement that Linux is not as easy to use as Windows. The Linux solutions … Continue reading USB or Removable Media Formatting in Linux →

GNU Health Con is an annual conference that brings together enthusiasts and developers of the Free/Libre Health & Hospital Information System. It hosted in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain on November 23rd until 25th.

I met the people behind the project during the openSUSE conference 2018. Since I'm health professional, this projects fits me. So I introduced myself to the community and started to write some articles and translate in Greek. I didn't have in mind to join GNU Health Conference by that time. I just liked the project and wanted to contribute. The idea to attend came after summer, during another conference. GNU Health is sponsored by openSUSE. So openSUSE planed to be there both with a presentation and a booth. I would like to thank openSUSE sponsoring me to attend to such an awesome conference.

My Odyssey for me started going from Thessaloniki to Hamburg (about 3 hours flight) and then Hamburg to Las Palmas (about 5 hours flight). I arrived just before midnight and the weather was rainy. Heavy rain. I didn't feel it much because I was exited to attend the conference.

The first day of the conference there were couple of interesting presentations such as Digital Health: Health for all by Tomas Karopka, Patient information governance standards by Dr Richard Fitton where he talked about the GDPR, Orthanc: Free ecosystem for medical imaging by Sebastien Jodogne, a project that is very useful even to veterinarians. I liked Isabela's presentation about Privacy and security of your health information. She introduced us to Tor project and mission. A cool thing I learnt there was the facebookcorewwwi.onion (it allows access to Facebook through the Tor protocol) and onionshare (an open source tool that lets you securely and anonymously share a file of any size). Ghazal Hassan explained what it's happening in Morocco. The title of his presentation was Challenges in health data management in low-income countries. The day closed with Ludwig Nussel presenting openSUSE Leap and Tumbleweed an overview. The feedback was very positive on openSUSE. Many implementations are on openSUSE and the guys that use it, they say that it's very stable system even they have some obstacles to overcome on infrastructure. The day closed with a round table about open source on health. A conclusion that came out from this talk is that we have to document everything we do, so more people can use our product.

During the coffee break, we had our group photo.



The second day started with Axel Braun talking about the community followed by Vincenzo Virgilio that analyzed what is happening with migrants in Italy. It's something that it's happening in my country also and it's important to have a managing health platform for immigrants. Armand Mpassy-Nzouma analyzed how you can manage a project with GNU Health. He made a quite funny and inspiring talk. My friends from Argentina, Ingrid Spessotti and Francisco Moyano Casco talked about Diamante health information system. Francisco mentioned that they use Pentium 4 as servers. It's an example that if there is no money for technology, use what ever you have at the time. Emillen Fouda talked about the impact that GNU Health has at the Bafia District Hospital. Closing the day, Luis Falcon introduced the book of life and the GNU Health Federation. The day ended with GNU Health Social Medicine Awards 2018 and a dinner at a fancy restaurante.


Sunday was the last day of the conference. Actually it was workshop day. There was a demo of the federation and also the command line.

Personally, I helped at the booth, although there were not countless attendees. We had a pretty cozy booth. People got swag and asked questions about Leap and how it's connected to SUSE.


My experience was unbelievable. I'm very happy that openSUSE community supports a fantastic "health and healthy community". Usually doctors aren't that enthusiasts when it comes to conferences. But if you mix with open source, you get a hybrid. I can't wait to meet you again guys. Maybe FOSDEM, maybe next conference.

Here is a vlog (in Greek) about my trip to Las Palmas and the conference.


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