LOGGEN(1)

LOGGEN(1) The loggen manual page LOGGEN(1)

NAME
loggen - Generate syslog messages at a specified rate

SYNOPSIS
loggen [options]target [port]

DESCRIPTION
NOTE: The loggen application is distributed with the syslog-ng system
logging application, and is usually part of the syslog-ng package. The
latest version of the syslog-ng application is available at the
official syslog-ng website[1].

This manual page is only an abstract, for the complete documentation of
syslog-ng, see The syslog-ng Administrator Guide[2].

The loggen application is tool to test and stress-test your syslog
server and the connection to the server. It can send syslog messages to
the server at a specified rate, using a number of connection types and
protocols, including TCP, UDP, and unix domain sockets. The messages
can be generated automatically (repeating the PADDstring over and
over), or read from a file or the standard input.

When loggen finishes sending the messages, it displays the following
statistics:

o average rate: Average rate the messages were sent in
messages/second.

o count: The total number of messages sent.

o time: The time required to send the messages in seconds.

o average message size: The average size of the sent messages in
bytes.

o bandwidth: The average bandwidth used for sending the messages in
kilobytes/second.

OPTIONS
--active-connections <number-of-connections>
Number of connections loggen will use to send messages to the
destination. This option is usable only when using TCP or TLS
connections to the destination. Default value: 1

The loggen utility waits until every connection is established
before starting to send messages. See also the --idle-connections
option.

--csv or -C
Send the statistics of the sent messages to stdout as CSV. This can
be used for plotting the message rate.

--dgram or -D
Use datagram socket (UDP or unix-dgram) to send the messages to the
target. Requires the --inet option as well.

--dont-parse or -d
Do not parse the lines read from the input files, send them as
received.

--help or -h
Display a brief help message.

--idle-connections <number-of-connections>
Number of idle connections loggen will establish to the
destination. Note that loggen will not send any messages on idle
connections, but the connection is kept open using keep-alive
messages. This option is usable only when using TCP or TLS
connections to the destination. See also the --active-connections
option. Default value: 0

--inet or -i
Use the TCP (by default) or UDP (when used together with the
--dgram option) protocol to send the messages to the target.

--interval <seconds> or -I <seconds>
The number of seconds loggen will run. Default value: 10

Note
Note that when the --interval and --number are used together,
loggen will send messages until the period set in --interval
expires or the amount of messages set in --number is reached,
whichever happens first.

--ipv6 or -6
Specify the destination using its IPv6 address. Note that the
destination must have a real IPv6 address.

--loop-reading or -l
Read the file specified in --read-file option in loop: loggen will
start reading from the beginning of the file when it reaches the
end of the file.

--number <number-of-messages> or -n <number-of-messages>
Number of messages to generate.

--no-framing or -F
Do not use the framing of the IETF-syslog protocol style, even if
the syslog-proto option is set.

--quiet or -Q
Output statistics only when the execution of loggen is finished. If
not set, the statistics are displayed every second.

--permanent or -T
Keep sending logs indefinitely, without time limit.

--rate <message/second> or -r <message/second>
The number of messages generated per second for every active
connection. Default value: 1000

--read-file <filename> or -R <filename>
Read the messages from a file and send them to the target. See also
the --skip-tokens option.

Specify - as the input file to read messages from the standard
input (stdio). Note that when reading messages from the standard
input, loggen can only use a single thread. The -R - parameters
must be placed at end of command, like: loggen 127.0.0.1 1061
--read-file -

--sdata <data-to-send> or -p <data-to-send>
Send the argument of the --sdata option as the SDATA part of
IETF-syslog (RFC5424 formatted) messages. Use it together with the
--syslog-proto option. For example: --sdata "[test name=\"value\"]

--size <message-size> or -s <message-size>
The size of a syslog message in bytes. Default value: 256. Minimum
value: 127 bytes, maximum value: 8192 bytes.

--skip-tokens <number>
Skips the specified number of space-separated tokens (words) at the
beginning of every line. For example, if the messages in the file
look like foo bar message, --skip-tokens 2 skips the foo bar part
of the line, and sends only the message part. Works only when used
together with the --read-file parameter. Default value: 0

--stream or -S
Use a stream socket (TCP or unix-stream) to send the messages to
the target.

--syslog-proto or -P
Use the new IETF-syslog message format as specified in RFC5424. By
default, loggen uses the legacy BSD-syslog message format (as
described in RFC3164). See also the --no-framing option.

--unix </path/to/socket> or -x </path/to/socket>
Use a UNIX domain socket to send the messages to the target.

--use-ssl or -U
Use an SSL-encrypted channel to send the messages to the target.
Note that it is not possible to check the certificate of the
target, or to perform mutual authentication.

--version or -V
Display version number of syslog-ng.

EXAMPLES
The following command generates 100 messages per second for ten
minutes, and sends them to port 2010 of the localhost via TCP. Each
message is 300 bytes long.

loggen --stream --size 300 --rate 100 --interval 600 127.0.0.1 2010

The following command is similar to the one above, but uses the UDP
protocol.

loggen --inet --dgram --size 300 --rate 100 --interval 600 127.0.0.1 2010

Send a single message on TCP6 to the ::1 IPv6 address, port 1061:

loggen --ipv6 --number 1 ::1 1061

Send a single message on UDP6 to the ::1 IPv6 address, port 1061:

loggen --ipv6 --dgram --number 1 ::1 1061

Send a single message using a unix domain-socket:

loggen --unix --stream --number 1 </path/to/socket>

Read messages from the standard input (stdio) and send them to the
localhost:

loggen 127.0.0.1 1061 --read-file -

FILES
/usr/bin/loggen