[Syslog-ng-maintainers] Bug#1110329: syslog-ng-core: default config spews 1.2KB of stats to logs every second

[Andrew Bower]

Package: syslog-ng-core
Version: 4.8.1-5
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

With the default configuration, syslog-ng writes a very long line of stats
every second to two log files. This builds up to rather large log files of the
order of 700MB over a week.

Jul 20 07:45:06 <hostname> syslog-ng[2065]: Log statistics; processed='destination(d_mail)=0', processed='destination(d_cron)=606', processed='destination(d_error)=7930', processed='destination(d_uucp)=0', processed='global(payload_reallocs)=808524', processed='center(received)=412347', dropped='global(internal_source)=0', processed='global(internal_source)=396261', queued='global(internal_source)=0', processed='destination(d_daemon)=9280', processed='destination(d_messages)=396436', processed='destination(d_newserr)=0', processed='destination(d_debug)=3718', processed='destination(d_newscrit)=0', processed='center(queued)=842093', processed='destination(d_console)=6', processed='destination(d_kern)=125', processed='destination(d_user)=57', queued='global(scratch_buffers_bytes)=0', processed='source(s_src)=412347', processed='destination(d_syslog)=406329', processed='global(msg_clones)=0', processed='global(sdata_updates)=0', processed='destination(d_lpr)=0', stamp='src.internal(s_src#2)=1752993905', processed='destination(d_console_all)=7944', processed='destination(d_xconsole)=7944', processed='src.internal(s_src#2)=396261', processed='destination(d_newsnotice)=0', processed='destination(d_auth)=1718', queued='global(scratch_buffers_count)=2'

I don't think this is an appropriate default! I suggest turning this off with
stats(freq(0));

Thanks,

Andrew

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 13.0
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 6.12.37+deb13-amd64 (SMP w/24 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages syslog-ng-core depends on:
ii  libc6                      2.41-11
ii  libcap2                    1:2.75-10+b1
ii  libglib2.0-0t64            2.84.3-1
ii  libivykis0t64              0.43.2-1+b1
ii  libjson-c5                 0.18+ds-1
ii  libnet1                    1.3+dfsg-2
ii  libpcre2-8-0               10.45-1
ii  libssl3t64                 3.5.1-1
ii  libsystemd0                257.7-1
ii  libwrap0                   7.6.q-36
ii  sysvinit-utils [lsb-base]  3.14-4

Versions of packages syslog-ng-core recommends:
ii  logrotate  3.22.0-1

Versions of packages syslog-ng-core suggests:
pn  syslog-ng-mod-add-contextual-data  <none>
pn  syslog-ng-mod-amqp                 <none>
pn  syslog-ng-mod-examples             <none>
pn  syslog-ng-mod-geoip2               <none>
pn  syslog-ng-mod-graphite             <none>
pn  syslog-ng-mod-http                 <none>
pn  syslog-ng-mod-mongodb              <none>
pn  syslog-ng-mod-python               <none>
pn  syslog-ng-mod-rdkafka              <none>
pn  syslog-ng-mod-redis                <none>
pn  syslog-ng-mod-riemann              <none>
pn  syslog-ng-mod-slog                 <none>
pn  syslog-ng-mod-snmp                 <none>
pn  syslog-ng-mod-sql                  <none>
pn  syslog-ng-mod-stardate             <none>
pn  syslog-ng-mod-stomp                <none>
pn  syslog-ng-mod-xml-parser           <none>

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/init.d/syslog-ng changed:
(includes https://github.com/gcsideal/syslog-ng-debian/pull/14 fix)

/etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.conf as installed:
@version: 4.4
@include "scl.conf"
options { chain_hostnames(off); flush_lines(0); use_dns(no); use_fqdn(no);
	  dns_cache(no); owner("root"); group("adm"); perm(0640);
	  stats(freq(1));
          bad_hostname("^gconfd$");
};