How to forward keepalived logs to a custom logfile with rsyslog in RHEL?

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
    • 7
    • 8
  • rsyslog
  • Keepalived

Issue

  • While using the default keepalived configuration, logs are set to LOG_DAEMON which redirects output to /var/log/messages

Resolution

  1. Create a custom syslog facility from one of those reserved for custom use (local0 to local7):

        # echo "local0.*  /var/log/keepalived.log" > /etc/rsyslog.d/keepalived.conf

  2. Replace the KEEPALIVED_OPTIONS configuration parameter at /etc/sysconfig/keepalived, adding the -S 0 option to redirect
    Keepalived log files to log facility 0:

        # sed -i 's|KEEPALIVED_OPTIONS="-D"|KEEPALIVED_OPTIONS="-D -d -S 0"|g' /etc/sysconfig/keepalived

  3. Restart rsyslog and Keepalived

        systemctl restart rsyslog
    systemctl restart keepalived

Root Cause

Keepalived works using the default log levels, that will redirect information to /var/log/messages instead of a custom logfile or directory. With this configuration a custom local0 syslog facility is being set for Keepalived to write to.

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