Beaver

python daemon that munches on logs and sends their contents to logstash

Requirements

• Python 2.7 (untested on other versions)
• libzmq (brew install zmq or apt-get install libzmq-dev)

Installation

Using PIP:

From Github:

pip install git+git://github.com/josegonzalez/beaver.git#egg=beaver

From PyPI:

pip install beaver==1

Usage

usage:

beaver [-h] [-r {worker,interactive}] [-m {bind,connect}] [-p PATH]
                 [-f FILES [FILES ...]] [-t TRANSPORT]

optional arguments:

-h, --help            show this help message and exit
-m {bind,connect}, --mode {bind,connect}
                      bind or connect mode
-p PATH, --path PATH  path to log files
-f FILES [FILES ...], --files FILES [FILES ...]
                      space-separated filelist to watch. Overrides --path
                      argument
-t/--transport {rabbitmq,redis,stdout,zmq}
                  log transport method
                  default is stdout
-c CONFIG, --configfile CONFIG
                      ini config file path

Background

Beaver provides an lightweight method for shipping local log files to Logstash. It does this using either redis, stdin, zeromq as the transport. This means you'll need a redis, stdin, zeromq input somewhere down the road to get the events.

Events are sent in logstash's json_event format. Options can also be set as environment variables.

Examples

Example 1: Listen to all files in the default path of /var/log on standard out as json:

beaver

Example 2: Listen to all files in the default path of /var/log on standard out with msgpack:

BEAVER_FORMAT='msgpack' beaver

Example 3: Listen to all files in the default path of /var/log on standard out as a string:

BEAVER_FORMAT='string' beaver

Example 4: Sending logs from /var/log files to a redis list:

REDIS_URL="redis://localhost:6379/0" beaver -t redis

Example 5: Use environment variables to send logs from /var/log files to a redis list:

REDIS_URL="redis://localhost:6379/0" BEAVER_PATH="/var/log" BEAVER_TRANSPORT=redis beaver

Example 6: Zeromq listening on port 5556 (all interfaces):

ZEROMQ_ADDRESS="tcp://*:5556" beaver -m bind -t zmq

# logstash config:
input { zeromq {
    type => 'shipper-input'
    mode => 'client'
    topology => 'pushpull'
    address => 'tcp://shipperhost:5556'
  } }
output { stdout { debug => true } }

Example 7: Zeromq connecting to remote port 5556 on indexer:

ZEROMQ_ADDRESS="tcp://indexer:5556" beaver -m connect -t zmq

# logstash config:
input { zeromq {
    type => 'shipper-input'
    mode => 'server'
    topology => 'pushpull'
    address => 'tcp://*:5556'
  }}
output { stdout { debug => true } }

Example 8: Real-world usage of Redis as a transport:

# in /etc/hosts
192.168.0.10 redis-internal

# From the commandline
REDIS_NAMESPACE='app:unmappable' REDIS_URL='redis://redis-internal:6379/0' beaver -f /var/log/unmappable.log -t redis

# logstash indexer config:
input { redis {
    host => 'redis-internal' # this is in dns for work
    data_type => 'list'
    key => 'app:unmappable'
    type => 'app:unmappable'
}}
output { stdout { debug => "true" }}

As you can see, beaver is pretty flexible as to how you can use/abuse it in production.

Example 9: RabbitMQ connecting to defaults on remote broker:

# From the commandline
RABBITMQ_HOST="10.0.0.1" beaver -t rabbitmq

# logstash config:
input { amqp {
    name => "logstash-queue"
    type => "direct"
    host => "10.0.0.1"
    exchange => "logstash-exchange"
    key => "logstash-key"
    exclusive => false
    durable => false
    auto_delete => false
  }}
output { stdout { debug => "true" }}

Example 10: Read config from config.ini and put to stdout:

# From the commandline
beaver -c config.ini -t stdout

# config.ini content:
[/tmp/somefile]
type: mytype
tags: tag1,tag2

[/var/log/*log]
type: syslog
tags: sys

Todo

• Use python threading + subprocess in order to support usage of yield across all operating systems
• Fix usage on non-linux platforms - file.readline() does not work as expected on OS X. See above for potential solution
• More transports
• ~Separate tranports into different files so that individual transport requirements are not required on all installations (libzmq)~
• ~Create a python package~
• Ability to specify files, tags, and other metadata within a configuration file

Credits

Based on work from Giampaolo and Lusis:

Real time log files watcher supporting log rotation.

Original Author: Giampaolo Rodola' <g.rodola [AT] gmail [DOT] com>
http://code.activestate.com/recipes/577968-log-watcher-tail-f-log/

License: MIT

Other hacks (ZMQ, JSON, optparse, ...): lusis