Syslog Receiver

Available in: contrib Maintainers: @andrzej-stencel Source: opentelemetry-collector-contrib

Supported Telemetry

Overview

Configuration

Field	Default	Description
`tcp`	`nil`	Defined tcp_input operator. (see the TCP configuration section)
`udp`	`nil`	Defined udp_input operator. (see the UDP configuration section)
`protocol`	required	The protocol to parse the syslog messages as. Options are `rfc3164`, `rfc5424`, and experimental `none`. Use `none` for syslog data that doesn’t conform to RFC3164 or RFC5424 but is still delivered over the syslog transport, so the receiver’s framing (e.g. octet counting) still applies. The message contents are not parsed and are kept as-is in the `message` field; a leading PRI header (e.g. `<34>`) is still decoded when present.
`location`	`UTC`	The geographic location (timezone) to use when parsing the timestamp (Syslog RFC 3164 only). The available locations depend on the local IANA Time Zone database. This page contains many examples, such as `America/New_York`.
`enable_octet_counting`	`false`	Whether or not to enable RFC 6587 Octet Counting on syslog parsing (TCP only).
`max_octets`	`8192`	The maximum octets for messages using RFC 6587 Octet Counting on syslog parsing (TCP only).
`allow_skip_pri_header`	`false`	Allow parsing records without the PRI header. If this setting is enabled, messages without the PRI header will be successfully parsed. The `SeverityNumber` and `SeverityText` fields as well as the `priority` and `facility` attributes will not be set on the log record. If this setting is disabled (the default), messages without PRI header will throw an exception. To set this setting to `true`, the `enable_octet_counting` setting must be `false`.
`non_transparent_framing_trailer`	`nil`	The framing trailer, either `LF` or `NUL`, when using RFC 6587 Non-Transparent-Framing (Syslog RFC 5424 and TCP only).
`attributes`	{}	A map of `key: value` pairs to add to the entry’s attributes. Keys must be strings, values must be strings or expressions that evaluate to a string.
`resource`	{}	A map of `key: value` pairs to add to the entry’s resource. Keys must be strings, values must be strings or expressions that evaluate to a string.
`operators`	[]	An array of operators. See below for more details
`retry_on_failure.enabled`	`false`	If `true`, the receiver will pause reading a file and attempt to resend the current batch of logs if it encounters an error from downstream components.
`retry_on_failure.initial_interval`	`1 second`	Time to wait after the first failure before retrying.
`retry_on_failure.max_interval`	`30 seconds`	Upper bound on retry backoff interval. Once this value is reached the delay between consecutive retries will remain constant at the specified value.
`retry_on_failure.max_elapsed_time`	`5 minutes`	Maximum amount of time (including retries) spent trying to send a logs batch to a downstream consumer. Once this value is reached, the data is discarded. Retrying never stops if set to `0`.
`on_error`	`send`	The behavior of the syslog parser if it encounters an error. See on_error.

Operators

Each operator performs a simple responsibility, such as parsing a timestamp or JSON. Chain together operators to process logs into a desired format.

Every operator has a type.
Every operator can be given a unique id. If you use the same type of operator more than once in a pipeline, you must specify an id. Otherwise, the id defaults to the value of type.
Operators will output to the next operator in the pipeline. The last operator in the pipeline will emit from the receiver. Optionally, the output parameter can be used to specify the id of another operator to which logs will be passed directly.
Only parsers and general purpose operators should be used.

UDP Configuration

Field	Default	Description
`listen_address`	required	A listen address of the form `<ip>:<port>`.
`add_attributes`	false	Adds `net.*` attributes according to OpenTelemetry semantic conventions.
`multiline`		A `multiline` configuration block. See below for details.
`one_log_per_packet`	false	Skip log tokenization, set to true if logs contain one log per record and multiline is not used. This will improve performance.
`preserve_leading_whitespaces`	false	Whether to preserve leading whitespaces.
`preserve_trailing_whitespaces`	false	Whether to preserve trailing whitespaces.
`encoding`	`utf-8`	The encoding of the file being read. See the list of supported encodings below for available options.
`async`	nil	An `async` configuration block. See below for details.

TCP Configuration

Field	Default	Description
`max_log_size`	`1MiB`	The maximum size of a log entry to read before failing. Protects against reading large amounts of data into memory.
`listen_address`	required	A listen address of the form `<ip>:<port>`.
`tls`	nil	An optional `TLS` configuration (see the TLS configuration section).
`add_attributes`	false	Adds `net.*` attributes according to OpenTelemetry semantic conventions.
`multiline`		A `multiline` configuration block. See below for details.
`one_log_per_packet`	false	Skip log tokenization, set to true if logs contain one log per record and multiline is not used. This will improve performance.
`preserve_leading_whitespaces`	false	Whether to preserve leading whitespaces.
`preserve_trailing_whitespaces`	false	Whether to preserve trailing whitespaces.
`encoding`	`utf-8`	The encoding of the file being read. See the list of supported encodings below for available options.
`max_connections`	0	The maximum number of open TCP connections allowed. 0 means unlimited.
`connection_idle_timeout`	0	The maximum duration a TCP connection can be idle before being closed. 0 means no idle timeout.

TLS Configuration

The tcp_input operator supports TLS, disabled by default.

Field	Default	Description
`cert_file`		Path to the TLS cert to use for TLS required connections.
`key_file`		Path to the TLS key to use for TLS required connections.
`ca_file`		Path to the CA cert. For a client this verifies the server certificate. For a server this verifies client certificates. If empty, the system root CA is used.
`client_ca_file`		(optional) Path to the TLS cert to use by the server to verify a client certificate. This sets the ClientCAs and ClientAuth to RequireAndVerifyClientCert in the TLSConfig. Please refer to godoc.org/crypto/tls#Config for more information.

`multiline` configuration

If set, the multiline configuration block instructs the udp_input operator to split log entries on a pattern other than newlines. note If multiline is not set at all, it won’t split log entries at all. Every UDP packet is going to be treated as a log. note multiline detection works per UDP packet due to protocol limitations. The multiline configuration block must contain exactly one of line_start_pattern or line_end_pattern. These are regex patterns that match either the beginning of a new log entry, or the end of a log entry. The omit_pattern setting can be used to omit the start/end pattern from each entry.

Supported encodings

Key	Description
`nop`	No encoding validation. Treats the file as a stream of raw bytes
`utf-8`	UTF-8 encoding
`utf-16le`	UTF-16 encoding with little-endian byte order
`utf-16be`	UTF-16 encoding with big-endian byte order
`ascii`	ASCII encoding
`big5`	The Big5 Chinese character encoding

Other less common encodings are supported on a best-effort basis. See https://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets/character-sets.xhtml for other encodings available.

`async` configuration

If set, the async configuration block instructs the udp_input operator to read and process logs asynchronously and concurrently. note If async is not set at all, a single thread will read & process lines synchronously.

Field	Default	Description
`readers`	1	Concurrency level - Determines how many go routines read from UDP port and push to channel (to be handled by processors).
`processors`	1	Concurrency level - Determines how many go routines read from channel (pushed by readers) and process logs before sending downstream.
`max_queue_length`	100	Determines max number of messages which may be waiting for a processor. While the queue is full, the readers will wait until there’s room (readers will not drop messages, but they will not read additional incoming messages during that period).

Additional Terminology and Features

An entry is the base representation of log data as it moves through a pipeline. All operators either create, modify, or consume entries.
A field is used to reference values in an entry.
A common expression syntax is used in several operators. For example, expressions can be used to filter or route entries.

Parsers with Embedded Operations

Many parsers operators can be configured to embed certain followup operations such as timestamp and severity parsing. For more information, see complex parsers.

Example Configurations

TCP Configuration:

receivers:
  syslog:
    tcp:
      listen_address: "0.0.0.0:54526"
    protocol: rfc5424

UDP Configuration:

receivers:
  syslog:
    udp:
      listen_address: "0.0.0.0:54526"
    protocol: rfc3164
    location: UTC

None Protocol Configuration (for non-conforming syslog data): Use protocol: none when messages are delivered over the syslog transport but do not conform to RFC3164 or RFC5424. The receiver still handles transport framing, but the message contents are passed through unparsed in the message field. Octet counting can be combined with none to frame messages on TCP:

receivers:
  syslog:
    tcp:
      listen_address: "0.0.0.0:54526"
    protocol: none
    enable_octet_counting: true

Configuration

Example Configuration

syslog:
  tcp:
    listen_address: "127.0.0.1:29018"
  protocol: rfc5424

Last generated: 2026-08-24

​Syslog Receiver

​Supported Telemetry

​Overview

​Configuration

​Operators

​UDP Configuration

​TCP Configuration

​TLS Configuration

​multiline configuration

​Supported encodings

​async configuration

​Additional Terminology and Features

​Parsers with Embedded Operations

​Example Configurations

​Configuration

​Example Configuration

Syslog Receiver

Supported Telemetry

Overview

Configuration

Operators

UDP Configuration

TCP Configuration

TLS Configuration

`multiline` configuration

Supported encodings

`async` configuration

Additional Terminology and Features

Parsers with Embedded Operations

Example Configurations

Configuration

Example Configuration