System Monitoring Over SysLog (SMOSL)

ALPHA.! At the moment this is some old code pulled out of the closet and dumped here in the hope it will get structure.

• Monitoring metrics are send through in the message part or a syslog message.
• Metrics are space separated from one another
• Key is separated from value with '=' (equals) no spaces

eg.

app1:database:open_connections=5 app1:database:last_error="out of memory"

The JSON equivalent would be.

{app1: {database: {open_connections: 5, last_error: "out of memory"}}}

Installation

cp smosl.py /usr/local/bin/smosl.py
cp 100-smosl.conf /etc/rsyslog.d/.
sudo service ryslog restart

Keys

The key contain a hierarchy, sections in the hierarchy are separated from one another with the ':' character. The key and all it sections are case insensitive and should only consist out of 'a' to 'z', '0' to '9' and the '_' character. When key is processed the key will be converted to lower case, any character not in the above listed set will be dropped.

Value Types

SMOSL has only 3 data types, it is up to the client to force values into one of the following types: Text, Number and Boolean.

Text

• Value part must be surrounded by '"' (double quotes).
• Length of string is only limited by syslog implementation.

Example:

metric:name="The string value."

The JSON equivalent would be.

{metric: {hour: "The string value."}}

Number

• All numbers are converted to a floating point number.
• If conversion failed value is discarded.

Example:

metric:hour=24

The JSON equivalent would be.

{metric: {hour: 24}}

Boolean (True, False, Null, None)

• T, F or N Could work nice for boolean and null.
• The lack of a value (a '=' followed by a space) should be treated as a Null.

metric:seg1:seg2=T

The JSON equivalent would be.

{metric: {seg1: {seg2: true}}}