How to build the testing tools?
This article has been tested with rsyslog 5.7.1 on Fedora 13. It is part of the article “How to use rate limiting?”
Go back to First try to test rate limiting (fail)
When building a configuration for rsyslog, you will sometimes stumble upon the question, if your setup really works. To prove this in your environment is very complicated in most cases. For this we have made some test tools, which help you test your configuration. The main reason for us to create these tools was for testing new features and try out scenarios. But in the end we deliver them with every release. We will describe the way how to create and use the testing tools with the example of the tool syslog_caller. This tool creates a bunch of messages for the local loghost.
First you need to navigate to your rsyslog folder. From there you need to go to the subfolder tests. The path could look like this:
/home/username/rsyslog/tests/
We need to “make” the tests first before we can use it.
# make syslog_caller
The make process gives you some output. It looks like this:
CC syslog_caller.or CCLD syslog_caller
After that, we are ready to use the test-tool. Use the following command:
./syslog_caller
This will generate 500 messages by default. You can change the default values with some switches. The switches are usually documented in the .c file of the tool. In this case, when using the following:
./syslog_caller -m 10000
will generate 10000 messages. With the test tools, you can do some stress-testing for your rsyslog installation. A good way to proof, if your configuration is working correctly.