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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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    • 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!!

                    An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
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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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