This small utility monitors the systemd journal, managed by journald
, and writes journal entries into
AWS Cloudwatch Logs.
This program is an alternative to the AWS-provided logs agent. The official logs agent copies data from on-disk text log files into Cloudwatch, while this utility reads directly from the systemd journal.
The journal event data is written to Cloudwatch Logs in JSON format, making it amenable to filtering using the JSON filter syntax. Log records are translated to Cloudwatch JSON events using a structure like the following:
{
"instanceId": "i-xxxxxxxx",
"pid": 12354,
"uid": 0,
"gid": 0,
"cmdName": "cron",
"exe": "/usr/sbin/cron",
"cmdLine": "/usr/sbin/CRON -f",
"systemdUnit": "cron.service",
"bootId": "fa58079c7a6d12345678b6ebf1234567",
"hostname": "ip-10-1-0-15",
"transport": "syslog",
"priority": "INFO",
"message": "pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)",
"syslog": {
"facility": 10,
"ident": "CRON",
"pid": 12354
},
"kernel": {}
}
The JSON-formatted log events could also be exported into an AWS ElasticSearch instance using the built-in sync mechanism, to obtain more elaborate filtering and query capabilities.
If you have a binary distribution, you just need to drop the executable file somewhere.
This tool assumes that it is running on an EC2 instance.
This tool uses libsystemd
to access the journal. systemd-based distributions generally ship
with this already installed, but if yours doesn't you must manually install the library somehow before
this tool will work.
This tool uses a small configuration file to set some values that are required for its operation. Most of the configuration values are optional and have default settings, but a couple are required.
The configuration file uses a syntax like this:
log_group = "my-awesome-app"
// (you'll need to create this directory before starting the program)
state_file = "/var/lib/journald-cloudwatch-logs/state"
The following configuration settings are supported:
-
aws_region
: (Optional) The AWS region whose CloudWatch Logs API will be written to. If not provided, this defaults to the region where the host EC2 instance is running. -
ec2_instance_id
: (Optional) The id of the EC2 instance on which the tool is running. There is very little reason to set this, since it will be automatically set to the id of the host EC2 instance. -
log_group
: (Required) The name of the cloudwatch log group to write logs into. This log group must be created before running the program. -
log_stream
: (Optional) The name of the cloudwatch log stream to write logs into. This defaults to the EC2 instance id. Each running instance of this application (along with any other applications writing logs into the same log group) must have a uniquelog_stream
value. If the given log stream doesn't exist then it will be created before writing the first set of journal events. -
state_file
: (Required) Path to a location where the program can write, and later read, some state it needs to preserve between runs. (The format of this file is an implementation detail.) -
buffer_size
: (Optional) The size of the local event buffer where journal events will be kept in order to write batches of events to the CloudWatch Logs API. The default is 100. A batch of new events will be written to CloudWatch Logs every second even if the buffer does not fill, but this setting provides a maximum batch size to use when clearing a large backlog of events, e.g. from system boot when the program starts for the first time.
This program requires access to call some of the Cloudwatch API functions. The recommended way to achieve this is to create an IAM Instance Profile that grants your EC2 instance a role that has Cloudwatch API access. The program will automatically discover and make use of instance profile credentials.
The following IAM policy grants the required access across all log groups in all regions:
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": [
"logs:CreateLogStream",
"logs:PutLogEvents",
"logs:DescribeLogStreams"
],
"Resource": [
"arn:aws:logs:*:*:log-group:*",
"arn:aws:logs:*:*:log-group:*:log-stream:*"
]
}
]
}
In more complex environments you may want to restrict further which regions, groups and streams
the instance can write to. You can do this by adjusting the two ARN strings in the "Resource"
section:
- The first
*
in each string can be replaced with an AWS region name likeus-east-1
to grant access only within the given region. - The
*
afterlog-group
in each string can be replaced with a Cloudwatch Logs log group name to grant access only to the named group. - The
*
afterlog-stream
in the second string can be replaced with a Cloudwatch Logs log stream name to grant access only to the named stream.
Other combinations are possible too. For more information, see the reference on ARNs and namespaces.
This application can run on the same host as the official Cloudwatch Logs agent but care must be taken to ensure that they each use a different log stream name. Only one process may write into each log stream.
This program is best used as a persistent service that starts on boot and keeps running until the
system is shut down. If you're using journald
then you're presumably using systemd; you can create
a systemd unit for this service. For example:
[Unit]
Description=journald-cloudwatch-logs
Wants=basic.target
After=basic.target network.target
[Service]
User=nobody
Group=nobody
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/journald-cloudwatch-logs /usr/local/etc/journald-cloudwatch-logs.conf
KillMode=process
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=42s
This program is designed under the assumption that it will run constantly from some point during system boot until the system shuts down.
If the service is stopped while the system is running and then later started again, it will "lose" any journal entries that were written while it wasn't running. However, on the initial run after each boot it will clear the backlog of logs created during the boot process, so it is not necessary to run the program particularly early in the boot process unless you wish to promptly capture startup messages.
Copyright (c) 2015 Say Media Inc
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