# AddtlFrameDelimiter

Defines an additional ASCII frame delimiter for non-standard senders.

This parameter applies to imptcp: Plain TCP Syslog.

Name:

  AddtlFrameDelimiter

Scope:

  input

Type:

  integer

Default:

  input=-1

Required?:

  no

Introduced:

  at least 5.x, possibly earlier

## Description

This directive permits to specify an additional frame delimiter for plain tcp syslog. The industry-standard specifies using the LF character as frame delimiter. Some vendors, notable Juniper in their NetScreen products, use an invalid frame delimiter, in Juniper’s case the NUL character. This directive permits to specify the ASCII value of the delimiter in question. Please note that this does not guarantee that all wrong implementations can be cured with this directive. It is not even a sure fix with all versions of NetScreen, as I suggest the NUL character is the effect of a (common) coding error and thus will probably go away at some time in the future. But for the time being, the value 0 can probably be used to make rsyslog handle NetScreen’s invalid syslog/tcp framing. For additional information, see this forum thread. If this doesn’t work for you, please do not blame the rsyslog team. Instead file a bug report with Juniper!

Note that a similar, but worse, issue exists with Cisco’s IOS implementation. They do not use any framing at all. This is confirmed from Cisco’s side, but there seems to be very limited interest in fixing this issue. This directive can not fix the Cisco bug. That would require much more code changes, which I was unable to do so far. Full details can be found at the Cisco tcp syslog anomaly page.

## Input usage

    input(type="imptcp" addtlFrameDelimiter="...")

### Legacy names (for reference)

Historic names/directives for compatibility. Do not use in new configs.

- $InputPTCPServerAddtlFrameDelimiter — maps to AddtlFrameDelimiter (status: legacy)

## See also

See also imptcp: Plain TCP Syslog.

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