Configuring syslog appender in CAS 4.0.1

[Thatcher Rea]

As the title suggests i'm trying to get this working - I found this bit of info in the documentation:

https://apereo.github.io/cas/4.2.x/installation/Monitoring-Statistics.html#routing-logs-to-syslog

But we're using 4.0.1 of CAS - attempting to apply this directive as is results in numerous errors.

log4j:WARN Element type "Appenders" must be declared.
log4j:WARN Continuable parsing error 27 and column 41
log4j:WARN Element type "Syslog" must be declared.
log4j:WARN Continuable parsing error 173 and column 23
log4j:WARN The content of element type "log4j:configuration" must match "(renderer*,throwableRenderer?,appender*,plugin*,(category|logger)*,root?,(categoryFactory|loggerFactory)?)".
log4j:WARN Unrecognized element Appenders
log4j:ERROR No appender named [SYSLOG] could be found.

If I change "Appenders" to "appender" as declared in other sections of the config I get a stack trace and various problems when starting this in the tomcat container. Any advice would be appreciated.

[Ray Bon]

Thatcher,

Is syslog running and accessible?

This is what we use for syslog:

        <Socket name="syslogAppender" host="localhost" port="1514" protocol="TCP">

<PatternLayout>

<pattern>&lt;%level{TRACE=169, DEBUG=175, INFO=174, WARN=172, ERROR=171, Fatal=168}&gt;%d{yyyy-MM-dd}T%d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} cas_app[%pid]: ${env:NAME}: %-5p %t(%T) %c{10} - %m%n%ex{none}</pattern>

            </PatternLayout>

        </Socket>

        <CasAppender name="syslog">

            <AppenderRef ref="syslogAppender" />

        </CasAppender>

You can ignore the pattern element or modify to suit your needs.

If you are using the old log4j (version 1.2, I think), you may be able to use documentation from that version.

Ray

On Tue, 2021-04-13 at 06:50 -0700, Thatcher Rea wrote:

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Ray Bon

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Development Services, University Systems

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[Thatcher Rea]

Thanks Ray, syslog is running and accessible.

This is using the version 1.2 of log4j - Is the config example you pasted from CAS 4.0.x ?

Many thanks

[Ray Bon]

Thatcher,

We are Using cas 6.2. I am not sure what version we started with syslog output.

log4j2 is quite an improvement over 1.2.

You may find it more beneficial to spend the time upgrading cas instead of working with the old log4j.

Ray

[Andy Ng]

Hi Thatcher,

I also agree with Ray, an upgrade is necessary to bring this feature in. 

In terms of why CAS 4.0.1 vs 4.2.x have this feature different:

the log4j library is at 1.2.17 on CAS 4.0.1

https://github.com/apereo/cas/blob/v4.0.1/pom.xml#L985

While the log4j library is at 2.5+ at the CAS 4.2.x build:

https://github.com/apereo/cas/blob/v4.2.0/gradle.properties#L23

Therefore, without upgrading your CAS, you will not be able to use this feature. Not only that, maintenance for CAS 4.x is EOL a very long time ago: https://apereo.github.io/cas/developer/Maintenance-Policy.html#eol-schedule. Upgrade to 6.x is highly recommended.

Cheers.

Andy