# pmrfc3164: Parse RFC3164-formatted messages

Author: Rainer Gerhards

This parser module is for parsing messages according to the traditional/legacy syslog standard RFC 3164

It is part of the default parser chain.

The parser can also be customized to allow the parsing of specific formats, if they occur.

## Parser Parameters

Note: parameter names are case-insensitive.

`permit.squareBracketsInHostname <boolean>`

  Default: off

  This setting tells the parser that hostnames that are enclosed by brackets should omit the brackets.

`permit.slashesInHostname <boolean>`

  Default: off

  Available since: 8.20.0

  This setting tells the parser that hostnames may contain slashes. This is useful when messages e.g. from a syslog-ng releay chain are received. Syslog-ng puts the various relay hosts via slashes into the hostname field.

`permit.AtSignsInHostname <boolean>`

  Default: off

  Available since: 8.25.0

  This setting tells the parser that hostnames may contain at-signs. This is useful when messages are relayed from a syslog-ng server in rfc3164 format. The hostname field sent by syslog-ng may be prefixed by the source name followed by an at-sign character.

`force.tagEndingByColon <boolean>`

  Default: off

  Available since: 8.25.0

  This setting tells the parser that tag need to be ending by colon to be valid. In others case, the tag is set to dash (“-“) without changing message.

`remove.msgFirstSpace <boolean>`

  Default: off

  Available since: 8.25.0

  rfc3164 tell message is directly after tag including first white space. This option tell to remove the first white space in message just after reading. It make rfc3164 & rfc5424 syslog messages working in a better way.

`detect.YearAfterTimestamp <boolean>`

  Default: off

  Some devices send syslog messages in a format that is similar to RFC3164, but they also attach the year to the timestamp (which is not compliant to the RFC). With regular parsing, the year would be recognized to be the hostname and the hostname would become the syslogtag. This setting should prevent this. It is also limited to years between 2000 and 2099, so hostnames with numbers as their name can still be recognized correctly. But everything in this range will be detected as a year.

## Example

We assume a scenario where some of the devices send malformed RFC3164 messages. The parser module will automatically detect the malformed sections and parse them accordingly.

    module(load="imtcp")

    input(type="imtcp" port="514" ruleset="customparser")

    parser(name="custom.rfc3164"
          type="pmrfc3164"
          permit.squareBracketsInHostname="on"
          detect.YearAfterTimestamp="on")

    ruleset(name="customparser" parser="custom.rfc3164") {
          ... do processing here ...
    }