Kibana 4 with tribe node MasterNotDiscoveredException

I use tribe nodes quite a lot at $work. It’s how we federate disparate ELK clusters and able to search across them. There are many reasons to have distinct ELK clusters in each data center and/or region.

Some of these are:

1. Elasticsearch does not work well when there is network latencies, which is guaranteed when your nodes are located geographically distant places. You could spend a lot of money to get fast network connection, or you can just have only local clusters. (Me? I pick saving money and avoiding head aches :-)).

2. It can get insanely expensive to create an ES cluster that span data centers/regions. The network bandwidth requirement, the data charges, the care and feeding of such a latency sensitive cluster…. OMG!

3. I don’t really think a 3rd reason is needed.

Although tribe nodes are great for federating ES clusters, there are some quirks in setting them up and caring for them (not as bad as ES clusters that span datacenter though).

One big gotcha for many people who are setting up tribe nodes for the first time is that tribe node can not create index. Tribe can only update, modify an existing index. What this mean is that if you point Kibana at a tribe node, you must first make sure you Kibana index is already created in one of the downstream ES cluster. Otherwise, you will have to create it yourself.

Otherwise, the first time you create an index pattern and tried to save it, you will get an error similar to the subject of this post.

MasterNotDiscoveredException

The error message is wrong and misleading. It has nothing to do with Master node. It has everything to do with tribe node not able to create (PUT) a Kibana index.

Personally, I prefer to make the Kibana index that I use with tribe to have its own unique name. So I run a dedicated Kibana instance pointing to the dedicated tribe (client) node.

Here are the steps I do to get a tribe node and its associated Kibana ready for use.

1. Configure the tribe node to know all the ES clusters I want to federate data from.

tribe.elasticsearch.yml:

cluster.name: toplevel_tribe
node.name: ${HOSTNAME}
node.master: false
node.data: false
tribe:
  DC1-appservice:
     cluster.name: logging-DC1
     network.host: 0.0.0.0
     network.publish_host: ${HOSTNAME}
     discovery.zen.ping.unicast.hosts:
      - dc1-app13225.prod.example.com
      - dc1-app13226.prod.example.com
      - dc1-app13227.prod.example.com
  DC2-appservice:
     cluster.name: logging-DC2
     network.host: 0.0.0.0
     network.publish_host: ${HOSTNAME}
     discovery.zen.ping.unicast.hosts:
      - dc2-app12281.prod.example.com
      - dc2-app12282.prod.example.com
      - dc2-app12283.prod.example.com
   DC3.....etc to DCNN

  my-es-dedicated-config-cluster:
     cluster.name: es-config-CORP
     network.host: 0.0.0.0
     network.publish_host: ${HOSTNAME}
     discovery.zen.ping.unicast.hosts:
      - corp-app1234.example.com

 on_conflict: prefer_my-es-dedicated-config-cluster

2. Now pre-create the Kibana index in my-ES-dedicated-config-cluster. This is a small cluster in my admin/corp data center that is only for housing configurations, Kibana dashboards, etc.

3. A simpler and more correct way is to temporary point Kibana to the dedicated ES cluster (instead of the tribe).

Do this via this setting in your kibana.yml file:

# The Elasticsearch instance to use for all your queries.
elasticsearch.url: “http://ES-node:9200”

Start Kibana, let it create the index. Then stop it, change the setting back to point to your tribe node.

Doing it this way ensure that your kibana is correct.

~~curl command for pre-creating kibana (3 and 4) index:~~

curl -s -XPUT "http://localhost:9200/kibana3-int/" -d '{ "settings" : { "number_of_shards" : 3, "number_of_replicas" : 2 }, "mappings" : { "temp" : { "properties" : { "dashboard" : { "type" : "string" }, "group" : { "type" : "string" }, "title" : { "type" : "string" }, "user" : { "type" : "string" } } }, "dashboard" : { "properties" : { "dashboard" : { "type" : "string" }, "group" : { "type" : "string" }, "title" : { "type" : "string" }, "user" : { "type" : "string" } } } }'

# Kibana4 curl -s -XPUT "http://localhost:9200/TRIBENAME-kibana4" -d '{ "index.mapper.dynamic" : true, "settings" : { "number_of_shards" : 1, "number_of_replicas" : 0 },"mappings" : {"search" : {"_timestamp" : { },"properties" : {"columns" : {"type" : "string"},"description" : {"type" : "string"},"hits" : {"type" : "long"},"kibanaSavedObjectMeta" : {"properties" : {"searchSourceJSON" : {"type" : "string"}}},"sort" : {"type" : "string"},"title" : {"type" : "string"},"version" : {"type" : "long"}}},"dashboard" : {"_timestamp" : { },"properties" : {"description" : {"type" : "string"},"hits" : {"type" : "long"},"kibanaSavedObjectMeta" : {"properties" : {"searchSourceJSON" : {"type" : "string"}}},"optionsJSON" : {"type" : "string"},"panelsJSON" : {"type" : "string"},"timeRestore" : {"type" : "boolean"},"title" : {"type" : "string"},"uiStateJSON" : {"type" : "string"},"version" : {"type" : "long"}}},"visualization" : {"_timestamp" : { },"properties" : {"description" : {"type" : "string"},"kibanaSavedObjectMeta" : {"properties" : {"searchSourceJSON" : {"type" : "string"}}},"savedSearchId" : {"type" : "string"},"title" : {"type" : "string"},"uiStateJSON" : {"type" : "string"},"version" : {"type" : "long"},"visState" : {"type" : "string"}}},"config" : {"_timestamp" : { },"properties" : {"buildNum" : {"type" : "long"},"defaultIndex" : {"type" : "string"}}},"index-pattern" : {"_timestamp" : { },"properties" : {"customFormats" : {"type" : "string"},"fieldFormatMap" : {"type" : "string"},"fields" : {"type" : "string"},"intervalName" : {"type" : "string"},"timeFieldName" : {"type" : "string"},"title" : {"type" : "string"}}}}}'

Elasticsearch util to copy/reindex index(es)

Elasticsearch (and the entire ELK stack) is pretty useful open source piece of software for analyzing large datasets. I manage a fairly large ELK infrastructure at work — around 90+ ES clusters, 300+ TB of data. One of things I’ve found myself having to do is copying and/or reindexing one or more index(es). Sometime to the same ES cluster, sometime moving index(es) to another cluster.

Regardless, it is just something that is done often enough, but yet in an ad-hoc manner. It’s not worth setting up logstash config to do this and then tearing them down.

Here is an example logstash config to do something like this.

logstash config:

input {
 elasticsearch {
   hosts => [ "host1", "host2", ..., "hostN" ]
   index => "index"
 }
}
filter {
 ......
}
output {
 elasticsearch {
 .....
 }
}

This gets old fast when there are many indices. So I wrote a tool to do this in Go. I used the elastic go library from Olivere (https://github.com/olivere/elastic).

I call it espipe and put it on my Github repo — https://github.com/TinLe/tools.

You will need to download it, and make sure you have a golang build environment setup. Then change into the source where espipe.go is located and type go build.

If you don’t have golang build environment setup and just want the binary to use, you can d/l espipe (this is built for linux x86_64).

Simple usage:

$ ./espipe -h
Usage of ./espipe:
  -bulksize int
    	Number of docs to send to ES per chunk (default to 500) (default 500)
  -dst string
    	Destination ES cluster (default to http://localhost:9200) (default "http://localhost:9200")
  -sidx string
    	Source index(es) to copy (default to all '*') (default "logstash*")
  -src string
    	Source ES cluster (default to http://localhost:9200) (default "http://localhost:9200")
  -tidx string
    	Target index to copy (default to 'copyidx') (default "copyidx")

# the following copy all nginx-access-YYYY.MM.DD indices from local cluster to
# anothercluster and consolidated all into one index
$ ./espipe -dst http://localhost:9200 -src http://anothercluster:9200 -sidx 'nginx-access*' -tidx 'nginx-consolidated' -bulksize 1000

Monitoring Postfix and Dovecot logs in ELK

I’ve been using pflogsumm for the longest time to monitor my postfix logs. When I used to manage hundreds of domains and many more mailing lists, it was important to keep an eye on my mail servers.

These days, it is just my own personal mail server for my dozens of domains. I don’t even need to, what with Google and other low cost email services. It’s for fun and to keep my skills sharp.

Since I have been working with ELK stack a lot lately, I have been wanting to send all my logs — nginx, syslog and postfix maillog — into ELK. There is already existing grok patterns in logstash for nginx, apache and syslog, but none for postfix. So I do what I always do, sit down and dived in.

To be clear, I don’t believe in re-inventing the wheel, so I did due diligence and searched for what others have done first. There were several places that posted their grok recipes for postfix. But none were exactly plug-n-play for me. I’ll list them here.

whyscream postfix grok pattern on github

antispin logstash postfix grok patterns

I ended up using a modified version of antispin’s patterns. I don’t use Amavisd, but I do use Dovecot. So I added new patterns and modified what was there for my particular installation.

My installation is

Fedora 21 (now 23) x86_64
Postfix 2.xx
Dovecot 2.xx
Elasticsearch v1.7.3
logstash v1.5.5
Kibana 4.1.3.
Hardware is:
- Dell XPS1210 laptop (3.5GB RAM and 250GB HD)
- ASUS Eee PC 900A (Atom N270, 2GB RAM and 4GB SSD, with 80GB external USB2 drive) – this one run Fedora 21 X86 (32 bit). Note that I have not seen any problems with mixing 32, 64 bit systems wrt ELK data.

On Fedora, postfix and dovecot logs go to syslogs and end up in /var/log/maillog.

I have logstash installed in /home/logstash. So I added in postfix pattern file in /home/logstash/patterns and called it (what else) postfix.

Also want to say that the site grokdebug really saved me a lot of time and headache. Use it if you ever have to create new grok patterns!

Here is the content of that file.

# Syslog stuff
COMPONENT ([\w._\/%-]+)
COMPID postfix\/%{COMPONENT:component}(?:\[%{NUMBER:pid}\])?
POSTFIX (?:%{SYSLOGTIMESTAMP:timestamp}|%{TIMESTAMP_ISO8601:timestamp8601}) (?:%{SYSLOGFACILITY} )?%{SYSLOGHOST:logsource} %{COMPID}:
# POSTFIX %{SYSLOGTIMESTAMP:timestamp} %{SYSLOGHOST:hostname} %{COMPID}: %{QUEUEID:queueid}
# POSTFIX_MESSAGE %{SYSLOGTIMESTAMP:timestamp} %{IPORHOST:host} %{DATA:program}/%{DATA:subprog}\[%{NUMBER:pid}\]: %{POSTFIX_QUEUEID:queueid}:

# Milter
HELO (?:\[%{IP:helo}\]|%{HOST:helo}|%{DATA:helo})

MILTERCONNECT %{QUEUEID:qid}: milter-reject: CONNECT from %{RELAY:relay}: %{GREEDYDATA:milter_reason}; proto=%{WORD:proto}
MILTERUNKNOWN %{QUEUEID:qid}: milter-reject: UNKNOWN from %{RELAY:relay}: %{GREEDYDATA:milter_reason}; proto=%{WORD:proto}
MILTEREHLO %{QUEUEID:qid}: milter-reject: EHLO from %{RELAY:relay}: %{GREEDYDATA:milter_reason}; proto=%{WORD:proto} helo=<%{HELO}>
MILTERMAIL %{QUEUEID:qid}: milter-reject: MAIL from %{RELAY:relay}: %{GREEDYDATA:milter_reason}; from=<%{EMAILADDRESS:from}> proto=%{WORD:proto} helo=<%{HELO}>
MILTERHELO %{QUEUEID:qid}: milter-reject: HELO from %{RELAY:relay}: %{GREEDYDATA:milter_reason}; proto=%{WORD:proto} helo=<%{HELO}>
MILTERRCPT %{QUEUEID:qid}: milter-reject: RCPT from %{RELAY:relay}: %{GREEDYDATA:milter_reason}; from=<%{EMAILADDRESS:from}> to=<%{EMAILADDRESS:to}> proto=%{WORD:proto} helo=<%{HELO}>
MILTERENDOFMESSAGE %{QUEUEID:qid}: milter-reject: END-OF-MESSAGE from %{RELAY:relay}: %{GREEDYDATA:milter_reason}; from=<%{EMAILADDRESS:from}> to=<%{EMAILADDRESS:to}> proto=%{WORD:proto} helo=<%{HELO}>

# Postfix stuff
QUEUEID (?:[A-F0-9]+|NOQUEUE)
EMAILADDRESSPART [a-zA-Z0-9_.+-=:~]+
EMAILADDRESS %{EMAILADDRESSPART:local}@%{EMAILADDRESSPART:remote}
RELAY (?:%{HOSTNAME:relayhost}(?:\[%{IP:relayip}\](?::[0-9]+(.[0-9]+)?)?)?)
#RELAY (?:%{HOSTNAME:relayhost}(?:\[%{IP:relayip}\](?:%{POSREAL:relayport})))
POSREAL [0-9]+(.[0-9]+)?
#DELAYS %{POSREAL:a}/%{POSREAL:b}/%{POSREAL:c}/%{POSREAL:d}
#DELAYS (%{POSREAL}[/]*)+
DSN %{NONNEGINT}.%{NONNEGINT}.%{NONNEGINT}
STATUS sent|deferred|bounced|expired
PERMERROR 5[0-9]{2}
MESSAGELEVEL reject|warning|error|fatal|panic

POSTFIXSMTPMESSAGE %{MESSAGELEVEL}: %{GREEDYDATA:reason}
POSTFIXACTION discard|dunno|filter|hold|ignore|info|prepend|redirect|replace|reject|warn

# postfix/smtp and postfix/lmtp, postfix/local and postfix/error
POSTFIXSMTP %{POSTFIXSMTPRELAY}|%{POSTFIXSMTPCONNECT}|%{POSTFIXSMTP5XX}|%{POSTFIXSMTPREFUSAL}|%{POSTFIXSMTPLOSTCONNECTION}|%{POSTFIXSMTPTIMEOUT}
# Jun 17 04:41:52 dir postfix/smtp[14434]: CE4FC560C0D: to=, relay=localhost[127.0.0.1]:2525, delay=0.32, delays=0.05/0.01/0.19/0.07, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as 1B6864661B2F)
POSTFIXSMTPRELAY %{QUEUEID:qid}: to=<%{DATA:to}>,(?:\sorig_to=<%{DATA:orig_to}>,)? relay=%{RELAY},(?: delay=%{POSREAL:delay},)?(?: delays=%{DATA:delays}?,)?(?: conn_use=%{POSREAL:conn_use},)?( %{WORD}=%{DATA},)+? dsn=%{DSN:dsn}, status=%{STATUS:result} %{GREEDYDATA:reason}
POSTFIXSMTPCONNECT connect to %{RELAY}: %{GREEDYDATA:reason}
POSTFIXSMTP5XX %{QUEUEID:qid}: to=<%{EMAILADDRESS:to}>,(?:\sorig_to=<%{EMAILADDRESS:orig_to}>,)? relay=%{RELAY}, (%{WORD}=%{DATA},)+ dsn=%{DSN:dsn}, status=%{STATUS:result} \(host %{HOSTNAME}\[%{IP}\] said: %{PERMERROR:responsecode} %{DATA:smtp_response} \(in reply to %{DATA:command} command\)\)
POSTFIXSMTPREFUSAL %{QUEUEID:qid}: host %{RELAY} refused to talk to me: %{GREEDYDATA:reason}
POSTFIXSMTPLOSTCONNECTION %{QUEUEID:qid}: lost connection with %{RELAY} while %{GREEDYDATA:reason}
POSTFIXSMTPTIMEOUT %{QUEUEID:qid}: conversation with %{RELAY} timed out while %{GREEDYDATA:reason}


# postfix/smtpd
POSTFIXSMTPD %{POSTFIXSMTPDCONNECTS}|%{POSTFIXSMTPDMILTER}|%{POSTFIXSMTPDACTIONS}|%{POSTFIXSMTPDTIMEOUTS}|%{POSTFIXSMTPDLOGIN}|%{POSTFIXSMTPDCLIENT}|%{POSTFIXSMTPDNOQUEUE}|%{POSTFIXSMTPDWARNING}|%{POSTFIXSMTPDLOSTCONNECTION}
POSTFIXSMTPDCONNECTS (?:dis)?connect from %{RELAY}
POSTFIXSMTPDMILTER %{MILTERCONNECT}|%{MILTERUNKNOWN}|%{MILTEREHLO}|%{MILTERMAIL}|%{MILTERHELO}|%{MILTERRCPT}
POSTFIXSMTPDACTIONS %{QUEUEID:qid}: %{POSTFIXACTION:postfix_action}: %{DATA:command} from %{RELAY}: %{PERMERROR:responsecode} %{DSN:dsn} %{DATA}: %{DATA:reason}; from=<%{EMAILADDRESS:from}> to=<%{EMAILADDRESS:to}> proto=%{DATA:proto} helo=<%{HELO}>
#POSTFIXSMTPDACTIONS %{QUEUEID:qid}: %{POSTFIXACTION:postfix_action}: %{DATA:command} from %{RELAY}: %{DATA:smtp_response}: %{DATA:reason}; from=<%{EMAILADDRESS:from}> to=<%{EMAILADDRESS:to}> proto=%{DATA:proto} helo=<%{HELO}>
POSTFIXSMTPDTIMEOUTS timeout after %{DATA:command} from %{RELAY}
POSTFIXSMTPDLOGIN %{QUEUEID:qid}: client=%{DATA:client}, sasl_method=%{DATA:saslmethod}, sasl_username=%{GREEDYDATA:saslusername}
POSTFIXSMTPDCLIENT %{QUEUEID:qid}: client=%{GREEDYDATA:client}
POSTFIXSMTPDNOQUEUE NOQUEUE: %{POSTFIXACTION:postfix_action}: %{DATA:command} from %{RELAY}: %{GREEDYDATA:reason}
POSTFIXSMTPDWARNING warning:( %{IP}: | hostname %{HOSTNAME} )?%{GREEDYDATA:reason}
# Jun  3 16:40:28 dir postfix/smtpd[16526]: improper command pipelining after HELO from 41.254.8.1.ZTE.WiMAX.dynamic.ltt.ly[41.254.8.1]: QUIT\r\n
POSTFIXSMTPDLOSTCONNECTION (?:lost connection after %{DATA:smtp_response} from %{RELAY}|improper command pipelining after HELO from %{GREEDYDATA:reason})

# postfix/cleanup
POSTFIXCLEANUP %{POSTFIXCLEANUPMESSAGE}|%{POSTFIXCLEANUPMILTER}
POSTFIXCLEANUPMESSAGE %{QUEUEID:qid}: (resent-)?message-id=(<)?%{GREEDYDATA:messageid}(>)?
POSTFIXCLEANUPMILTER %{MILTERENDOFMESSAGE}

# postfix/bounce
POSTFIXBOUNCE %{QUEUEID:qid}: sender (non-)?delivery( status)? notification: %{QUEUEID:bouncequeueid}

# postfix/qmgr and postfix/pickup
# Jun 15 14:33:26 dir postfix/qmgr[1282]: 76A5C560C09: from=<[email protected]>, size=21928, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
POSTFIXQMGR %{QUEUEID:qid}: (?:removed|from=<(?:%{DATA:from})?>(?:, size=%{NUMBER:size}, nrcpt=%{NUMBER:nrcpt} \(%{GREEDYDATA:queuestatus}\))?)

# postfix/anvil
# May 19 19:33:17 dir postfix/scache[8102]: statistics: domain lookup hits=0 miss=1 success=0%
#POSTFIXANVIL statistics:( %{DATA:anvilstatistic})?( for %{DATA:remotehost})?( at )?%{SYSLOGTIMESTAMP:timestamp}
POSTFIXANVIL statistics: %{GREEDYDATA:reason}

# postfix/trivial-rewrite
POSTFIXREWRITE warning: do not list domain %{DATA:domain} in BOTH mydestination and virtual_alias_domains

# AMAVISD
USER_AGENT User-Agent|X-Mailer
RECIPIENTS <%{EMAILADDRESS:recipient}>(,<%{GREEDYDATA:recipientlist}>)?
ORIGIN (%{DATA:originating_net} )\[%{IP:relay}\](:%{NUMBER}) \[%{IP:originip}\]
AMAVIS %{SYSLOGBASE} \(%{DATA}\) %{WORD:action} %{WORD:ccat} \{%{GREEDYDATA:policybank}\}, %{ORIGIN} <(%{EMAILADDRESS:from})> -> %{GREEDYDATA}, Queue-ID: %{QUEUEID}, Message-ID: <%{DATA:messageid}>%{GREEDYDATA:rest_of_message}

#AMAVISDNEW %{SYSLOGBASE} \(%{DATA:amavisdid}\) %{WORD:action} %{WORD:ccat} %{GREEDYDATA:policybank}, (%{GREEDYDATA:origin_net}) \[%{IP:relayip}\](:%{POSINT}) \[%{IP:originip}\] <(%{EMAILADDRESS:from})?> -> %{RECIPIENTS:recipients}, Queue-ID:%{QUEUEID}, Message-ID: <%{DATA:messageid}>,( mail_id: %{DATA:mail_id},)? Hits: %{NUMBER:hits:float}, size: %{NUMBER:size:int},( queued_as: %{QUEUEID:qid},)? Subject: "%{DATA:subject}", From: %{DATA:from},( %{USER_AGENT}: %{DATA:user_agent},)? Tests: \[%{DATA:TESTS}\],( shortcircuit=%{WORD:shortcircuit},)?( autolearn=%{WORD:autolearn},)? %{POSINT:elapsedtime} ms

#AMAVISDNEW %{SYSLOGBASE} \(%{DATA:amavisdid}\) %{WORD:action} %{WORD:ccat} %{GREEDYDATA:policybank}, \[%{RELAY:relayip}\] \[%{IP:originip}\] <(%{EMAILADDRESS:from})?> -> %{RECIPIENTS:recipients}, Message-ID: <%{DATA:messageid}>,( mail_id: %{DATA:mail_id},)? Hits: %{NUMBER:hits:float}, size: %{NUMBER:size:int},( queued_as: %{QUEUEID:qid},)? Subject: "%{DATA:subject}", From: %{DATA:from},( %{USER_AGENT}: %{DATA:user_agent},)? Tests: \[%{DATA:TESTS}\],( shortcircuit=%{WORD:shortcircuit},)?( autolearn=%{WORD:autolearn},)? %{POSINT:elapsedtime} ms

# Dovecot
# Jun 17 21:30:16 dir dovecot: imap(tin): Disconnected: Logged out in=397 out=45702
# Jun 15 09:26:18 dir dovecot: imap(tin): Connection closed in=352 out=1726
# Jun 19 01:19:29 dir dovecot: imap(pnguyen): Connection closed in=0 out=362
#DOVEID dovecot: %{DATA:component}(?:\(%{DATA:user}\))?(:)?
DOVEIMAP imap\(%{DATA:user}\): %{DATA:reason} in=%{NUMBER:inbytes} out=%{NUMBER:outbytes}

# May 21 21:58:12 dir dovecot: master: Warning: /home/alex is no longer mounted. See http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Mountpoints
# Jun  5 16:13:31 dir dovecot: anvil: Warning: Killed with signal 15 (by pid=1 uid=0 code=kill)
DOVECMD anvil|auth|config|log|master
DOVEMISC %{DOVECMD:command}: %{GREEDYDATA:reason}
# DOVEMISC %{(anvil|auth|config|log|master):command}: %{GREEDYDATA:reason}

DOVELOGIN imap-login: %{DATA:action}:(?: user=<(%{DATA:user})?>, (method=%{DATA:loginmethod}, )?rip=%{IP:rip}, lip=%{IP:lip},( mpid=%{NUMBER:mpid},( %{DATA:sectype},)?| %{DATA:securesession},)? session=<%{DATA:session}>| %{GREEDYDATA:reason})

DOVELDA lda\((%{DATA:user})?\):( %{DATA:action}:)? msgid=(?:<%{DATA:mesgid}@%{DATA:domain}>|%{DATA:mesgid}):( saved mail to| stored mail into mailbox) .*?%{DATA:folder}.*?

DOVEAUTH auth-worker\(%{NUMBER:pid}\): pam\((?:%{USERNAME:user}|%{EMAILADDRESS:user}),%{IP:ip}\): %{GREEDYDATA:reason}

DOVECOT (?:%{SYSLOGTIMESTAMP:timestamp}|%{TIMESTAMP_ISO8601:timestamp8601}) (?:%{SYSLOGFACILITY} )?%{SYSLOGHOST:logsource} dovecot: (%{DOVEIMAP}|%{DOVELOGIN}|%{DOVELDA}|%{DOVEAUTH}|%{DOVEMISC})

#PF %{SYSLOGBASE} (%{POSTFIXSMTP}|%{POSTFIXANVIL}|%{POSTFIXQMGR}|%{POSTFIXBOUNCE}|%{POSTFIXCLEANUP}|%{POSTFIXSMTPD}|%{AMAVIS})
PF %{POSTFIX} (?:%{POSTFIXSMTP}|%{POSTFIXANVIL}|%{POSTFIXQMGR}|%{POSTFIXBOUNCE}|%{POSTFIXCLEANUP}|%{POSTFIXSMTPD}|%{POSTFIXREWRITE})

MAILLOG (%{PF}|%{DOVECOT})

Here is the logstash.conf file, which uses the file input plugin and elasticsearch output plugin, along with the grok filter to make use of our patterns. Note that after analyzing the default mapping of incoming data, I decided to create my own customized template and override the default logstash mapping. You can leave as is, I just happen to want more control over my data mappings. The custom mapping is included below.

input {
  file {
    path => "/var/log/maillog*"
    exclude => "*.gz"
    start_position => "beginning"
    type => "maillog"
  }
}
filter {
  if [type] == "maillog" {
    grok {
      patterns_dir => ["/home/logstash/config/patterns"]
      match => { "message" => ["%{PF}", "%{DOVECOT}" ] }
    }
    date {
      match => [ "timestamp", "MMM dd HH:mm:ss" ]
    }
  }
  # I wanted to monitor metrics and health of logstash
  metrics {
    meter => "events"
    add_tag => "metric"
  }
}
output {
  if [type] == "maillog" {
    elasticsearch {
      index => "maillog-%{+YYYY.MM.dd}"
      host => "localhost"
      port => "9200"
      protocol => "http"
      flush_size => 1000
      ########################################################
      # the next 4 lines are for explicit index mapping
      manage_template => true
      template_overwrite => true
      template => "/home/logstash/config/templates/maillog.json"
      template_name => "maillog"
    }
  }
  if "metric" in [tags] {
    stdout {
      codec => line {
        format => "rate: %{events.rate_1m}"
      }
    }
  }
}

My customized mapping.

{
    "template" : "maillog-*",
    "order" : 1,
    "settings" : {
        "number_of_shards" : 2,
        "index.refresh_interval" : "90s"
    },
    "mappings" : {
        "maillog" : {
            "properties" : {
                "reason" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "saslusername" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "postfix_action" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "relayip" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "messageid" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "pid" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "long" },
                "remote" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "type" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "qid" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "local" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "result" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "path" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "file" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "type" : "string" },
                "queuestatus" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "smtp_response" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "@version" : { "type" : "string" },
                "host" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "client" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "from" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "timestamp" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "nrcpt" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "long" },
                "responsecode" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "long" },
                "offset" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "long" },
                "relayhost" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "logsource" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "message" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "orig_to" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "command" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "tags" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "helo" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "saslmethod" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "component" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "@timestamp" : { "format" : "dateOptionalTime", "type" : "date" },
                "remotehost" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "size" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "long" },
                "anvilstatistic" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "proto" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "bouncequeueid" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "to" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" },
                "dsn" : { "index": "not_analyzed", "doc_values": true, "type" : "string" }
            }
        }
    }
}

ELK Operational Tips

I’ve been running ELK clusters for over a year now, and want to share tips and tricks that I’ve found to be useful.

Feel free to post questions and corrections. I’ll try to answer and update when possible.

Elasticsearch

Split brained – this is when you have more than one node in your cluster becoming master.
- It is best to avoid ever having this happen. Use the rule of thumb, e.g. if you have N nodes, the number of nodes that can be master is N/2 + 1. Even better, set aside a dedicated pool of master nodes (I recommend minimum of 3 master capable nodes).
- If split brained does happen, you want to stop one of the master node ASAP. Depending on whether you have replicas or not, it could be easy fix, or you might end up having to re-index if your indices has gotten out of sync by having the replica promoted to primary and new index data sent to it.
Failed node(s) – one or more failed nodes. There are many scenarios, from failing hardware to outages causing data corruption, etc.
Planned maintenance – several scenarios.
Indexing take too long.
Recovery take too long.
Search/query take too long.

Logstash

Kibana

Online debugging/tutorial tools

Online Tools

In the course of my career, I’ve jumped from one platform, OS, programming, scripting languages, etc. to another. I’ve found that what make it easier to transition into a new “whatever” is the quality of tutorial and debugging tools available to me.

Besides local tools, there are some awesome web sites that are setup to help with debugging various problems. I am going to try to compile them here.

Please feel free to let me know of others that I’ve missed.

Go

Javascript

Python

Regular Expressions

http://regex101.com
http://www.geocities.jp/kosako3/oniguruma/doc/RE.txt
http://grokdebug.herokuapp.com/ – mainly for Logstash grok filter
http://grokconstructor.appspot.com/ – helped for testing and incremental construction of complicated grok filters