OC-Minitel/syslog/syslog-protocol.md

Syslog - Simple, network-capable event logging.

Logging is an important part of monitoring and maintaining a computer system. In the Unix world, you have syslog, which is, indeed, the inspiration of the Minitel syslog protocol.

Syslog for Minitel is a simple protocol designed for ease of implementation and filtering, and uses port 514 by default.

Packet format

A syslog packet may be reliable or unreliable, and may not be larger than 4096 bytes. Each packet consists of 3 sections, separated by tabs:

• The service field, containing the name of the service or other software that generated the event.
• The level field, a number indicating the severity of the event, as specified in RFC 5424, section 6.2.1, table 2.
• The message field, containing information about the event.

Behavior of syslog servers

Once an event is received over the network, the server may choose to save, relay, filter or drop an event as it chooses.