# rsyslog/rsyslog

High-performance log ingestion and ETL engine

Repository: https://github.com/rsyslog/rsyslog
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/rsyslog
Homepage: http://www.rsyslog.com
Language: C
License: LGPL-3.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: logging, syslog, c, kafka, elasticsearch, rsyslog, mongodb
Last push: 2026-08-25T16:01:40+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 95/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 86, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4839, "days_push": 8, "days_rel": 15, "gap_med": 59.0, "n_releases_24m": 3}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2329, forks 732 (observed 2026-08-28T04:06:37.589097+00:00)

## What it is
Rsyslog is a high-performance open-source log ingestion and ETL engine written in C, originally a syslog daemon and now a modular pipeline system for collecting, parsing, transforming, and routing event data. It supports 100+ input/output modules including Kafka, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, HTTP endpoints, and files, and can process over one million messages per second.

## Use cases
- centralize syslog from many servers into one log store
- ship logs to elasticsearch for search and dashboards
- forward application logs to kafka
- parse and enrich log messages before routing
- collect linux journal and log files into a pipeline
- relay syslog over tcp and udp in containerized environments
- buffer logs reliably with disk-assisted queues
- filter and route log messages by severity or content

## When to choose
- you need a battle-tested, very fast syslog server on linux
- you want a lightweight log shipper with modular inputs and outputs
- you need reliable buffering and forwarding of log data at scale
- you want to transform, normalize, or filter logs in a pipeline before storage

## When to avoid
- you need a full log analytics UI with dashboards out of the box
- you prefer config-as-code in a general-purpose language rather than rainerscript
- your stack is windows-only and you cannot use the separate commercial windows agent

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: stable
- function: logging, etl, streaming, message-queue, search-engine, monitoring
- domain: monitoring, backend, infrastructure-as-code, self-hosted
- platform: windows, self-hosted, cli
- tags: syslog, log-aggregation, log-processing, kafka, elasticsearch, rainerscript, log-forwarding, c, devops, linux, docker

## Member repositories
- rsyslog/rsyslog (main) score 95

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:37.589097+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:38:11.850321+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/rsyslog/rsyslog (fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:37.589097+00:00, sha 19f9d57d192a)
  - homepage: http://www.rsyslog.com (fetched 2026-08-29T10:18:56.716720+00:00, sha bfe83c13bcb0)
  - site_page: https://www.rsyslog.com/windows-agent/about-rsyslog-windows-agent (fetched 2026-08-29T10:18:56.727233+00:00, sha 59d0f5cc5b68)
  - site_page: https://www.rsyslog.com/about (fetched 2026-08-29T10:18:56.732960+00:00, sha 3ff62d67f7e0)
  - site_page: https://www.rsyslog.com/changelogs (fetched 2026-08-29T10:18:56.720188+00:00, sha 59e744933c38)
  - site_page: https://www.rsyslog.com/category/faq (fetched 2026-08-29T10:18:56.724611+00:00, sha f4018531c85a)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.