Multiline log records in syslog

Question

So I've configured my Python application to log to syslog with Python's SysLogHandler, and everything works fine. Except for multi-line handling. Not that I need to emit multiline log records so badly (I do a little), but I need to be able to read Python's exceptions. I'm using Ubuntu with rsyslog 4.2.0. This is what I'm getting:

Mar 28 20:11:59 telemachos root: ERROR 'EXCEPTION'#012Traceback (most recent call last):#012  File "./test.py", line 22, in <module>#012    foo()#012  File "./test.py", line 13, in foo#012    bar()#012  File "./test.py", line 16, in bar#012    bla()#012  File "./test.py", line 19, in bla#012    raise Exception("EXCEPTION!")#012Exception: EXCEPTION! 

Test code in case you need it:

import logging from logging.handlers import SysLogHandler  logger = logging.getLogger() logger.setLevel(logging.INFO) syslog = SysLogHandler(address='/dev/log', facility='local0') formatter = logging.Formatter('%(name)s: %(levelname)s %(message)r') syslog.setFormatter(formatter) logger.addHandler(syslog)  def foo():     bar()  def bar():     bla()  def bla():     raise Exception("EXCEPTION!")  try:     foo() except:     logger.exception("EXCEPTION") 

Answer 1

Alternatively, if you want to keep your syslog intact on one line for parsing, you can just replace the characters when viewing the log.

tail -f /var/log/syslog | sed 's/#012/\n\t/g'