Set Up Rsyslog and LogAnalyzer on CentOS Linux 5.5 for Centralized Logging

LogAnalyzer is a web based program that allows you to view event messages from a syslog source within your web browser.  Rsyslog is a drop in replacement for the syslog daemon that among other things allows syslog messages to be saved in a MySQL database.  Combining these two great programs and directing other network devices to forward syslog messages to a central server allows for a very powerful solution for searching and archiving event messages that occur throughout your network environment.  In this example I will install rsyslog on a CentOS Linux 5.5 server to aggregate and collect syslog messages and configure LogAnalyzer on the same server to allow for a user friendly interface for viewing and searching through these messages.

First we need to install some required RPM’s.  Since I am running LogAnalyzer, Rsyslog, and MySQL all on the same server I will install these required packages:

# yum install httpd php mysql php-mysql mysql-server wget rsyslog rsyslog-mysql

Now we’ll make sure MySQL and Apache are configured to start automatically and start them up:

# chkconfig mysqld on
# chkconfig httpd on
# service mysqld start
# service httpd start


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Monitoring Windows 2008 R2 Event Logs with Snare and Syslog

So now that you’ve deployed some brand spankin’ new Windows 2008 R2 servers you probably want to start gathering some information on their condition and monitor their security.  Syslog is a very good way to gather the logs from a large number of servers and direct them to a central site for analysis.  In this post we’ll make use of the Snare EventLog Agent to collect events from the Windows Event Log service and forward them to a centralized syslog server.  Since the events that are logged to the Event Log do not generally conform to the syslog standard some manipulation of the messages may be necessary on your syslog server.

In this example I will be installing the Snare EventLog Agent on an Active Directory domain controller so that I can monitor logon/logoff failure events that occur with my domain user accounts.  My central syslog server will be running on a CentOS Linux host using the syslog daemon rsyslog.  There are also many syslog servers available for Windows if you choose to go that route.  Kiwi is one with a nice interface but the full featured version is payware. Your choice of a syslog server to collect your messages should be immaterial to this discussion as the configuration steps should be the same with the Snare Agent.

First let’s start by installing the Snare Agent software.  You’ll want to download the version for Windows Vista and above here.  Logon as administrator on your 2008 R2 server and run the install file.

Proceed with the installation and accept the defaults until you get to the “Snare Auditing” screen.

The Snare Auditing screen allows you to give Snare the access necessary to edit the auditing settings on your server to conform to the objectives that you configure with the agent.  I’m generally paranoid about anything too automatic (especially on a domain controller) so I’ll select No.  This means that I’ll need to manually specify the auditing settings needed so that events are created in the Event Log.  Click Next.

If you want to configure higher security you can select one of the “Yes – with password” options for the Snare web configuration interface.  By default the user/password combo is snare/snare.  I’ll keep the default, no password is okay for me because the only access to the web interface is permitted on the local machine.  Click Next.

Run through the rest of the install keeping the default settings.

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