A set of logcheck rules that are opinionated and clean up my inbox.

This repository contains rules for a mix of Debian and Ubuntu packages and accepts contributions for both of these.

If you have rules that are applicable to a Debian stable package and that meet the following requirements, please consider to contribute them upstream so they reach more users:

• Rules must be as specific as possible (i.e. no .* matching).
• Rules for debug messages are not added.
• the ignored messages should be related to package versions in Debian unstable.
• The ignored messages are not temporary (e.g. due to a bug in the packages).
• The ignored messages are not related to startups/shutdowns/restarts.
• Error/warning/notice messages are usually not ignored.
• The rule request should contain example messages and an explanation why the messages can be ignored in general.

When developing a regex you probably need to test it more often than you want. The logcheck distribution contains the logcheck-test script that can be used to test rules.

You can also use rgxg to help generate regular expressions for numbers or to escape text.

System Events
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
May 15 06:25:47 host systemd[1]: Stopped Daily apt upgrade and clean activities.
May 15 06:25:47 host systemd[1]: Stopped Daily apt download activities.

This line was in the syslog file of the previous day, so I use logcheck-test -l /var/log/syslog.1 to test against this file. After getting the initial output I iteratively refine until it matches just the new lines that need to be ignored.

user@host:~$ logcheck-test -l /var/log/syslog.1 -e "systemd\\[[0-9]+\\].*"
May 15 03:13:15 host systemd[1]: Stopping User Manager for UID 1001...
...
================================================================================
parsed file: /var/log/syslog.1
used rule: '^[[:alpha:]]{3} [ :[:digit:]]{11} [._[:alnum:]-]+ systemd\[[0-9]+\].*Sto.*$'
user@host:~$ logcheck-test -l /var/log/syslog.1 -e "systemd\\[[0-9]+\\]: Stopped Daily.*"
May 15 06:25:47 host systemd[1]: Stopped Daily apt upgrade and clean activities.
May 15 06:25:47 host systemd[1]: Stopped Daily apt download activities.
================================================================================
parsed file: /var/log/syslog.1
used rule: '^[[:alpha:]]{3} [ :[:digit:]]{11} [._[:alnum:]-]+ systemd\[[0-9]+\]: Stopped Daily.*$'
user@host:~$ logcheck-test -l /var/log/syslog.1 -e "systemd\\[[0-9]+\\]: Stopped Daily apt (download|upgrade and clean) activities\."
May 15 06:25:47 host systemd[1]: Stopped Daily apt upgrade and clean activities.
May 15 06:25:47 host systemd[1]: Stopped Daily apt download activities.
================================================================================
parsed file: /var/log/syslog.1
used rule: '^[[:alpha:]]{3} [ :[:digit:]]{11} [._[:alnum:]-]+ systemd\[[0-9]+\]: Stopped Daily apt (download|upgrade and clean) activities\.$'

The documentation at bluelightav.org uses a different method. The regex is stored in a file to prevent possible mangling by the shell;

• save the regex in [file]
• egrep --file [file] /var/log/syslog

This repository contains rules contributed by others. If you want a rule to be added or consider some rules too lenient, please let me know. These logcheck rules keep my inbox (a bit) quieter.

Contributions by:

• asgh
• felixvictor
• TheCreeper (pull request, and his fork have been merged into this repo)
• ties