Logstash

Description

From https://www.elastic.co/products/logstash :

Logstash is an open source, server-side data processing pipeline that ingests data from a multitude of sources simultaneously, transforms it, and then sends it to your favorite “stash".

Configuration

Performance

pipeline.workers

The number of workers that will, in parallel, execute the filter and output stages of the pipeline. If you find that events are backing up, or that the CPU is not saturated, consider increasing this number to better utilize machine processing power.

https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/current/logstash-settings-file.html

This setting can be adjusted in /etc/logstash/logstash.yml.

Logstash Heap

By default, if total available memory is 8GB or greater, the Logstash heap size in /etc/logstash/jvm.options is configured (during setup) to equal 25% of available memory, but no greater than 4GB.

See https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/guide/current/heap-sizing.html#compressed_oops for more details.

You may need to adjust the value depending on your system's performance (running sudo so-logstash-restart after).

Parsing

Configuration files for custom parsing can be placed in /etc/logstash/custom. These will automatically get copied over to /etc/logstash/conf.d during the starting of Logstash.

After adding your custom configuration file(s), restart Logstash and check the log(s) for errors:

sudo so-logstash-restart && sudo tail -f /var/log/logstash/logstash.log

Mapping Templates

Logstash loads default mapping templates for Elasticsearch to use from /etc/logstash.

The two templates currently being used include:

logstash-template.json - applies to logstash-* indices

beats-template.json - applies to logstash-beats-* indices

Currently, new fields that do not match the template are stored in Elasticsearch, however, they are not indexed, unless provided in a mapping template.

If sending in custom logs to Security Onion that may not match existing fields for existing indices, it is recommended to create a dedicated index for the log source, as well as define a mapping template and output file for the custom log source.

To make sure Logstash can read the custom template:

1. Place the template in /etc/logstash/custom.
2. Make sure the template is added to LOGSTASH_OPTIONS in /etc/nsm/securityonion.conf: LOGSTASH_OPTIONS="--volume /etc/logstash/testme-template.json:/testme-template.json:ro"
3. Make sure the custom template is referenced in the appropriate output file (place the output file in /etc/logstash/custom, then modify it.).
4. Restart Logstash.

You can check to see if templates are loaded by typing something like the following at a command prompt:

curl localhost:9200/_template/logstash?pretty

If mappings defined in the template are different than in existing indices, you will receive mapping conflicts in Kibana.

To avoid this, either remove the existing indices, wiping all data, or re-index.

Logging

Log file settings can be adjusted in /etc/logstash/log4j2.properties. Currently, logs are set to rollover daily, and configured to be deleted after 7 days.

Options

You can specify your own custom options to be appended to the Logstash startup command, by editing LOGSTASH_OPTIONS in /etc/nsm/securityonion.conf.

Queue

Memory-backed

From: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/current/persistent-queues.html

By default, Logstash uses in-memory bounded queues between pipeline stages (inputs → pipeline workers) to buffer events. > The size of these in-memory queues is fixed and not configurable.

Persistent

From: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/current/persistent-queues.html

In order to protect against data loss during abnormal termination, Logstash has a persistent queue feature which will > > store the message queue on disk. Persistent queues provide durability of data within Logstash.

If you experience adverse effects using the default memory-backed queue, you can configure a disk-based persistent queue by un-remarking the following lines in /etc/logstash/logstash.yaml, modifying the values as appropriate, and restarting Logstash:

#queue.type: persisted
#queue.max_bytes: 1gb

sudo so-logstash-restart

More information:
https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/current/persistent-queues.html

Queue Max Bytes

The total capacity of the queue in number of bytes. Make sure the capacity of your disk drive is greater than the value >you specify here. If both queue.max_events and queue.max_bytes are specified, Logstash uses whichever criteria is reached >first.

Dead Letter Queue

If you want to check for dropped events, you can enable the dead letter queue. This will write all records that are not able to make it into Elasticsearch into a sequentially-numbered file (for each start/restart of Logstash).

This can be achieved by adding the following to /etc/logstash/logstash.yml:

dead_letter_queue.enable: true

and restarting Logstash:

sudo so-logstash-restart

The dead letter queue files are located in /nsm/logstash/dead_letter_queue/main/.

More information:
https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/current/dead-letter-queues.html

Redis

When using storage nodes, Logstash on the master server outputs to Redis (on the master server). Redis queues events from the Logstash output (on the master) and the Logstash input on the storage node(s) pull(s) from Redis. If you notice new events aren't making it into Kibana, you may want to first check Logstash on the master, then the redis queue.

Data Fields

Logstash process Bro logs, syslog, IDS alerts, etc., formatting said data into many different data fields, as described on the Data Fields page.

Log

The Logstash log is located at /var/log/logstash/logstash.log.