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    Syslog different in 2.2.x vs 2.1.x

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • jimpJ Offline
      jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
      last edited by

      Are the DNS logs sourced from "dnsmasq" in the logs? If so, that option must have been enabled.

      There isn't anything in the base system or packages that would have enabled query logging using the DNS Forwarder or DNS Resolver

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      • L Offline
        lshiry
        last edited by

        No, here is an example of what I see in the 2.1.5 syslogs:

        Mar 23 12:30:03 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx Mar 23 12:30:03 pf: yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy.51658 > 8.8.4.4.53: 26485+ A? mail.acuity.com. (33)

        (private addresses replaced)
        xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx = firewall address (syslog source)
        yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy = traffic source as seen and logged by the firewall

        These are just hosts on our network querying dns servers, we are not using DNS forwrder or DNS masq.  This is just being logged as the traffic passes through the firewall.

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        • jimpJ Offline
          jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
          last edited by

          That was being passed through by accident then, as a part of the pf output. We replaced the old log with a cleaner/more concise and easy-to-parse single-line format.

          If you want to log DNS queries, then use one of the methods from the link I pasted earlier.

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          • L Offline
            lshiry
            last edited by

            Oh no, that is too bad.  That was extremely useful info to get in syslog.  So now in order to get that data I need to use either dns forwarder or dnsmasq?  Any chance this can be added back in for those of us that don't want to use either of those?

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            • jimpJ Offline
              jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
              last edited by

              It was never intended to be there in the first place, and there are no plans to bring back that old log format.

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              • L Offline
                lshiry
                last edited by

                Ok, thanks for your help.

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                • johnpozJ Offline
                  johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                  last edited by

                  so you want to log queries your clients do to say googledns?  Your not running any resolver or forwarder on pfsense or anywhere else in your network?  I do believe both dnsmasq and unbound have options to log queries.  I think dnstap was added to unbound in 1.5.0, so since we just moved to 1.5.3 thought that would be an option?

                  Guess you could always run dnstop to view dns queries, etc.  But you want to log specific IP queries, for troubleshooting or always?

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                  • L Offline
                    lshiry
                    last edited by

                    Yes, looking to log all dns queries.  We are not running any dns services on the pfsense.  We are running some bind resolvers, I suppose we could enable query logging on those to get the data.  It was just really nice getting the data in the pfsense logs, and hate that they took it away.  I want to always log dns queries, it is very useful for event correlation and forensics.

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                    • johnpozJ Offline
                      johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                      last edited by

                      If your clients are using your bind servers, why would you not log it there and send it to syslog?  Bind has very extensive logging functionality if you want it, etc.

                      As to pfsense fixing how they were sending syslog - its a good thing!!

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                      • L Offline
                        lshiry
                        last edited by

                        Yes, that is what we will be doing, using the logging in bind.  I agree that the log format needed to be fixed, but I think they could have done it without removing data.

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                        • jimpJ Offline
                          jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                          last edited by

                          The data was never supposed to be there in the first place, it was only there by luck/coincidence the way that pf log output was interpreted by tcpdump. It's data that should never have shown up, but…

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