Graylog Collector Sidecar

Required Graylog version: 2.0 and later + installed graylog-plugin-collector

The Graylog Collector Sidecar is a supervisor process for 3rd party log collectors like NXLog. The Sidecar program is able to fetch configurations from a Graylog server and render them as a valid configuration file for various log collectors. You can think of it like a centralized configuration management system for your log collectors.

Documentation

Please check our official documentation for more information. Especially the Step-by-Step guide to get the first setup running.

Installation

Download a package and install it on the target system.

Beats backend

Ubuntu

The Beats binaries (Filebeat and Winlogeventbeat) are included in the Sidecar package. So installation is just one command.

  $ sudo dpkg -i collector-sidecar_0.1.0-1_amd64.deb

Edit /etc/graylog/collector-sidecar/collector_sidecar.yml, you should set at least the correct URL to your Graylog server and proper tags. The tags are used to define which configurations the host should receive.

Create a system service and start it

  $ sudo graylog-collector-sidecar -service install
  $ sudo start collector-sidecar

CentOS

  $ sudo rpm -i collector-sidecar-0.1.0-1.x86_64.rpm

Activate the Sidecar as a system service

  $ sudo graylog-collector-sidecar -service install
  $ sudo systemctl start collector-sidecar

Windows

The Windows installation path changed to C:\Program Files with version 0.0.9, please stop and uninstall former installations before doing the update

  $ collector_sidecar_installer.exe

It's also possible to run the installer in silent mode with

  $ collector_sidecar_installer.exe /S

Edit C:\Program Files\graylog\collector-sidecar\collector_sidecar.yml.

  $ C:\Program Files\graylog\collector-sidecar\graylog-collector-sidecar.exe -service install
  $ C:\Program Files\graylog\collector-sidecar\graylog-collector-sidecar.exe -service start

NXLog backend

Ubuntu

Install the NXLog package from the offical download page

  $ sudo /etc/init.d/nxlog stop
  $ sudo update-rc.d -f nxlog remove
  $ sudo gpasswd -a nxlog adm
  $ sudo chown -R nxlog.nxlog /var/spool/collector-sidecar/nxlog
 
  $ sudo dpkg -i collector-sidecar_0.1.0-1_amd64.deb

Edit /etc/graylog/collector-sidecar/collector_sidecar.ymlaccordingly.

  $ sudo graylog-collector-sidecar -service install
  $ sudo start collector-sidecar

CentOS

  $ sudo service nxlog stop
  $ sudo chkconfig --del nxlog
  $ sudo gpasswd -a nxlog root
  $ sudo chown -R nxlog.nxlog /var/spool/collector-sidecar/nxlog

  $ sudo rpm -i collector-sidecar-0.1.0-1.x86_64.rpm

Activate the Sidecar as a system service

  $ sudo graylog-collector-sidecar -service install
  $ sudo systemctl start collector-sidecar

Windows

The Windows installation path changed to C:\Program Files with version 0.0.9, please stop and uninstall former installations before doing the update

Also notice that the NXLog file input is currently not able to do a SavePos for file tailing, this will be fixed in a future version.

Install the NXLog package from the offical download page and deactive the system service. We just need the binaries installed on that host.

  $ C:\Program Files (x86)\nxlog\nxlog -u

  $ collector_sidecar_installer.exe

Edit C:\Program Files\graylog\collector-sidecar\collector_sidecar.yml, you should set at least the correct URL to your Graylog server and proper tags.

  $ C:\Program Files\graylog\collector-sidecar\graylog-collector-sidecar.exe -service install
  $ C:\Program Files\graylog\collector-sidecar\graylog-collector-sidecar.exe -service start

Uninstall on Windows

  $ C:\Program Files\graylog\collector-sidecar\graylog-collector-sidecar.exe -service stop
  $ C:\Program Files\graylog\collector-sidecar\graylog-collector-sidecar.exe -service uninstall

Debugging

Run the Sidecar in foreground mode for debugging purposes. Simply call it like this and look out for error messages:

  $ graylog-collector-sidecar -c /etc/graylog/collector-sidecar/collector_sidecar.yml

Configuration

There are a couple of configuration settings for the Sidecar:

Parameter	Description
server_url	URL to the Graylog API, e.g. http://127.0.0.1:9000/api/
update_interval	The interval in seconds the sidecar will fetch new configurations from the Graylog server
tls_skip_verify	Ignore errors when the REST API was started with a self-signed certificate
send_status	Send the status of each backend back to Graylog and display it on the status page for the host
list_log_files	Send a directory listing to Graylog and display it on the host status page. This can also be a list of directories
node_id	Name of the Sidecar instance, will also show up in the web interface
collector_id	Unique ID (UUID) of the instance. This can be an ID string or a path to an ID file
log_path	A path to a directory where the Sidecar can store the output of each running collector backend
log_rotation_time	Rotate the stdout and stderr logs of each collector after X seconds
log_max_age	Delete rotated log files older than Y seconds
tags	List of configuration tags. All configurations on the server side that match the tag list will be fetched and merged by this instance
backends	A list of collector backends the user wants to run on the target host

Each backend can be enabled/disabled and should point to a binary of the actual collector and a path to a configuration file the Sidecar can write to:

Parameter	Description
name	The type name of the collector
enabled	Weather this backend should be started by the Sidecar or not
binary_path	Path to the actual collector binary
configuration_path	A path for this collector configuration file Sidecar can write to
run_path	(NXLog only) If PidFile is changed in the default-snippet, tell Sidecar about it

Compile

• Clone the repository into your $GOPATH under src/github.com/Graylog2/collector-sidecar
• Install the glide package manager
• run glide install in the collector-sidecar directory
• (for Go <1.6 export GO15VENDOREXPERIMENT=1)
• run make build

Development

There is a collector mock programm in order to use the collector-sidecar without actually running a collector like NXLog. Simply build it with make misc und use the option binary_path: misc/nxmock/nxlog.