Configuration
Basic usage
Log data collection is configured in the ossec.conf file primarily in the localfile, remote and global sections. Configuration of log data collection can also be completed in the agent.conf file to centralize the distribution of these configuration settings to relevant agents.
As in this basic usage example, provide the name of the file to be monitored and the format:
<localfile>
<location>/var/log/messages</location>
<log_format>syslog</log_format>
</localfile>
Monitoring logs using regular expressions for file names
Wazuh supports posix regular expressions. For example, to analyze every file that ends with a .log inside the /var/log
directory, use the following configuration:
<localfile>
<location>/var/log/*.log</location>
<log_format>syslog</log_format>
</localfile>
Monitoring date-based logs
For log files that change according to the date, you can also specify a strftime format to replace the day, month, year, etc. For example, to monitor the log files like C:\Windows\app\log-08-12-15.log
, where 08 is the year, 12 is the month and 15 the day (and it is rolled over every day), configuration is as follows:
<localfile>
<location>C:\Windows\app\log-%y-%m-%d.log</location>
<log_format>syslog</log_format>
</localfile>
Reading logs from Windows Event Log
To monitor a Windows event log, you need to provide the format as "eventlog" and the location as the name of the event log:
<localfile>
<location>Security</location>
<log_format>eventlog</log_format>
</localfile>
Reading events from Windows Event Channel
You can additionally monitor specific Windows event channels. The location is the name of the event channel. This is the only way to monitor the Applications and Services logs. If the file name contains a "%", replace it with "/":
<localfile>
<location>Microsoft-Windows-PrintService/Operational</location>
<log_format>eventchannel</log_format>
</localfile>