Documentation forKiwi Syslog Server NG

Create a custom log file format

This documentation is for legacy Kiwi Syslog Server versions 9.8.2 and older.

When you add an action to log messages to a file, you can specify the log file format. If you do not want to use the standard formats available, you can create your own custom file logging format.

  1. Choose File > Setup to open the Kiwi Syslog Server Setup dialog box.
  2. Expand the Formatting node.
  3. Right-click the Custom file formats node and choose Add new custom file format.
  4. Replace the default name with a descriptive name. (The name does not have to be unique.)
  5. Specify the following options:

    Log file fields
    1. Select the fields that you want to include in the log file. (See the examples of fields and values below.)
    2. Drag and drop the fields to specify the order in which the information is shown.

    Custom fields are for use by the run script action. By writing a parsing script, the syslog message text can be broken down into various sub fields. The values can then be assigned to the 16 custom fields and then logged to a file. Because each device manufacturer creates syslog messages in a different format, it is not possible to create a generic parser that will break up the message text into separate fields. A custom script must be written to parse the message text and then place it in the custom fields. Example parsing scripts can be found in the \Scripts sub folder. If you select the Custom field checkbox, all 16 custom fields will be written to the log file. Each custom field is separated by the selected delimiter character.

    Date and Time formats Select the date and time formats appropriate for your location.
    Field delimiter

    Select the character used to separate the fields. Tab characters are the most common delimiters used for syslog files.

    Qualifier Select an option if you want to enclose each field can be enclosed in quotes or tags. This option is useful when the delimiter is a comma.
    Adjust time to UTC Select this option to adjust the date and time stamps in your log files to be adjusted to UTC (GMT) time. The current time difference (in hours) between your system and UTC is shown in brackets.
  6. Click Apply to save the format.

Examples of fields and values

The following table shows examples of fields and their values.

Field name Example
Date 28/01/2017
Time 16:12:54
Date-Time 28/01/2017 16:12:54
Milliseconds 123
TimeZone -13 hrs
Facility Local7
Level Debug
Priority Local7.Debug
HostAddress 192.168.0.1
Hostname host.company.com
InputSource UDP
Message Text This is a test message from Kiwi Syslog Server
Custom Custom01 Custom02 Custom03 etc.