IMPORTANT: No additional bug fixes or documentation updates will be released for this version. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.
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Logstash 7.12.0 Release Notes

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Logstash 7.12.0 Release Notes

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Security update

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Certificate verification with internal monitoring. We fixed a bug in the monitoring pipeline that caused it to pass monitoring data to Elasticsearch with certificate verification disabled. Logstash internal monitoring had been sending monitoring metadata (such as pipeline throughput metrics) to Elasticsearch without verifying the recipient. #12749

For information: CVE-2021-22138.

New features and enhancements

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Progress toward Elastic Common Schema (ECS)

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We’ve done more work to help ease your transition to Elastic Common Schema (ECS). This release extends ECS work in previous releases. Here’s a recap:

  • ECS support in Elasticsearch output plugin (7.9). The elasticsearch output plugin can manage index templates that are compatible with ECS. For more info, see Compatibility with the Elastic Common Schema (ECS).
  • Pipeline level ECS compatibility (7.10). The pipeline.ecs_compatibility setting lets users control ECS compatibility for all plugins in a pipeline at once instead of configuring each instance manually. This setting lets users lock in a specific behavior in advance of their next major version upgrade.

ECS compatibility is off-by-default in Logstash 7.x, but will be on-by-default in Logstash 8.0.

ECS-compliant grok patterns
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The grok filter plugin offers a new set of patterns to make event field names ECS-compliant. (No worries if you’re not ready to transition yet. The complete set of legacy patterns is still available and continues to be the default for Logstash 7.x.)

The ECS pattern set has an equivalent for each pattern in the legacy set, and is a drop-in replacement. Use the ecs_compatibility setting when you’re ready to switch modes.

ECS-compliant beats input
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The beats input plugin is now ECS-compliant. It adds two fields related to the event: the deprecated host which contains the hostname, and the ip_address containing the remote address of the client’s connection. When ECS compatibility mode is enabled these fields are moved to ECS-compatible namespace.

JDK 15 support

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Logstash introduces support for JDK 15! You need to update settings in jvm.options and log4j2.properties if:

  • you are upgrading from Logstash 7.11.x (or earlier) to 7.12 or later, AND
  • you are using JDK 15 or later.

Unless both of these conditions apply, you don’t need to adjust settings because of the upgrade. See Using JDK 15 for more information.

Conditional settings for JVM versions

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We’ve added support for conditional settings and behavior, dependent on the JVM version. Now you can configure different settings for different JVM versions. Here is an example from the default jvm.options file.

Example:

## GC configuration
8-13:-XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC
8-13:-XX:CMSInitiatingOccupancyFraction=75
8-13:-XX:+UseCMSInitiatingOccupancyOnly

This example sets garbage collection (GC) values for JDK 8-13 only. Those settings don’t apply to JVM 14 and above.

This feature is available for any setting in the jvm.options file, and aligns more closely with the Elasticsearch implementation of jvm settings.

Aarch64 (ARM64) support for Linux (beta)

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Support for 64-bit ARM architectures on Linux is now in beta, with downloadable artifacts and docker images available.

Performance improvements and notable issues fixed

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Pipeline loading and monitoring improvements

We’ve made changes to start the webserver that exposes the Logstash metrics API earlier in the startup process. For slow starting pipelines, this would cause error messages to appear in the Logstash logs, and cause delays to the availability of the metrics API. #12571

Windows startup fixes

We’ve fixed an issue where Logstash would crash when attempting to start using the bundled JDK when Logstash was located in a folder where the folder name contained spaces #12585

Plugin releases

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Elasticsearch Filter - 3.9.3

  • [DOC] Update links to use shared attributes #144
  • [DOC] Fixed links to restructured Logstash-to-cloud docs #142
  • [DOC] Document the permissions required in secured clusters #140

Geoip Filter - 6.0.5

  • Fix database download task. Upgrade project to java 11 #175
  • Enable the use of MaxMind GeoIP2-Domain databases #162

Grok Filter - 4.4.0

  • Feat: ECS compatibility support. Add (built-in) patterns definitions that are fully Elastic Common Schema compliant. #162

Metrics Filter - 4.0.7

  • [DOC] Fixed typo in documentation

Beats Input - 6.1.0

  • ECS compatibility enablement. Introduces an ecs_compatibility setting is used to declare the level of ECS compatibility at plugin level. #404
  • Feat: log + unwrap generic SSL context exceptions #405
  • [DOC] Update links to use shared attributes #403

Elasticsearch Input - 4.9.1

  • [DOC] Replaced hard-coded links with shared attributes #143
  • [DOC] Added missing quote to docinfo_fields example #145

Http Input - 3.3.7

  • Feat: improved error handling/logging/unwraping #133

Redis Input - 3.6.0

  • Remove ruby pipeline dependency. Starting from Logstash 8, Ruby execution engine is not available. All pipelines should use Java pipeline #84

Syslog Input - 3.4.5

  • Added support for listening on IPv6 addresses

Tcp Input - 6.0.7

  • Fix: reduce error logging (to info level) on connection resets #168
  • Refactor: only patch Socket classes once (on first input)
  • Refactor: use a proper log4j logger (in Java to avoid surprises when unwrapping LogStash::Logging::Logger)

Udp Input - 3.4.0

  • Added ECS compatibility mode (disabled and v1) to rename ip source address in a ECS compliant name #50
  • Fixed integration tests for IPv6 downgrading Docker to version 2.4 #51

Kafka Integration - 10.7.1

  • Fix: dropped usage of SHUTDOWN event deprecated since Logstash 5.0 #71

Rabbitmq Integration - 7.2.0

  • Remove ruby pipeline dependency. Starting from Logstash 8, Ruby execution engine is not available. All pipelines should use Java pipeline #39

Ecs_compatibility_support Mixin - 1.1.0

  • Support Mixin for ensuring a plugin has an ecs_compatibility method that is configurable from an ecs_compatibility option that accepts the literal disabled or a v-prefixed integer representing a major ECS version (e.g., v1), using the implementation from Logstash core if available.

Cloudwatch Output - 3.0.9

  • Fix: dropped usage of SHUTDOWN event deprecated since Logstash 5.0 #18

Elasticsearch Output - 10.8.2

  • [DOC] Update links to use shared attributes #985

Lumberjack Output - 3.1.8

  • Fix: dropped usage of SHUTDOWN event deprecated since Logstash 5.0 #31

S3 Output - 4.3.3

  • [DOC] Update links to use shared attributes #230

Core Patterns - 4.3.0

With 4.3.0 we’re introducing a new set of pattern definitions compliant with Elastic Common Schema (ECS), on numerous places patterns are capturing names prescribed by the schema or use custom namespaces that do not conflict with ECS ones.

Changes are backwards compatible as much as possible and also include improvements to some of the existing patterns.

Besides fields having new names, values for numeric (integer or floating point) types are usually converted to their numeric representation to ease further event processing (e.g. http.response.status_code is now stored as an integer).

to leverage the new ECS pattern set in Logstash a grok filter upgrade to version >= 4.4.0 is required.

  • aws

    • in ECS mode we dropped the (incomplete) attempt to capture rawrequest from S3_REQUEST_LINE
    • S3_ACCESS_LOG will handle up-to-date S3 access-log formats (6 new field captures at the end) Host Id → Signature Version → Cipher Suite → Authentication Type → Host Header → TLS version
    • ELB_ACCESS_LOG will handle optional (-) in legacy mode
    • null values such as - or -1 time values (e.g. ELB_ACCESS_LOG's request_processing_time) are not captured in ECS mode

  • bacula

    • Fix: improve matching of BACULA_HOST as HOSTNAME
    • Fix: legacy BACULA_ patterns to handle (optional) spaces
    • Fix: handle BACULA_LOG Job Id: X prefix as optional
    • Fix: legacy matching of BACULA fatal error lines

  • bind

    • BIND9's legacy querytype was further split into multiple fields as: dns.question.type and bind.log.question.flags
    • BIND9 patterns (legacy as well) were adjusted to handle Bind9 >= 9.11 compatibility
    • BIND9_QUERYLOGBASE was introduced for potential re-use

  • bro

    • BRO_ patterns are stricter in ECS mode - won’t mistakenly match newer BRO/Zeek formats
    • place holders such as (empty) tags and - null values won’t be captured
    • each BRO_ pattern has a newer ZEEK_ variant that supports latest Zeek 3.x versions e.g. ZEEK_HTTP as a replacement for BRO_HTTP (in ECS mode only), there’s a new file zeek where all of the ZEEK_XXX pattern variants live

  • exim

    • introduced EXIM (EXIM_MESSAGE_ARRIVAL) to match message arrival log lines - in ECS mode!

  • firewalls

    • introduced IPTABLES pattern which is re-used within SHOREWALL and SFW2
    • SHOREWALL now supports IPv6 addresses (in ECS mode - due IPTABLES pattern)
    • timestamp fields will be captured for SHOREWALL and SFW2 in legacy mode as well
    • SHOREWALL became less strict in containing the kernel: sub-string
    • NETSCREENSESSIONLOG properly handles optional session_id=... reason=... suffix
    • interval and xlate_type (legacy) CISCO fields are not captured in ECS mode

  • core (grok-patterns)

    • SYSLOGFACILITY type casts facility code and priority in ECS mode
    • SYSLOGTIMESTAMP will be captured (from SYSLOGBASE) as timestamp
    • Fix: e-mail address’s local part to match according to RFC (#273)

  • haproxy

    • several ECS-ified fields will be type-casted to integer in ECS mode e.g. haproxy.bytes_read
    • fields containing null value (-) are no longer captured (e.g. in legacy mode captured_request_cookie gets captured even if "-")

  • httpd

    • optional fields (e.g. http.request.referrer or user_agent) are only captured when not null (-)
    • source.port (clientport in legacy mode) is considered optional
    • dropped raw data (rawrequest legacy field) in ECS mode
    • Fix: HTTPD_ERRORLOG should match when module missing (#299)

  • java

    • JAVASTACKTRACEPART's matched line number will be converted to an integer
    • CATALINALOG matching was updated to handle Tomcat 7/8/9 logging format
    • TOMCATLOG handles the default Tomcat 7/8/9 logging format
    • old (custom) legacy TOMCAT format is handled by the added TOMCATLEGACY_LOG
    • TOMCATLOG and TOMCAT_DATESTAMP still match the legacy format, however this might change at a later point - if you rely on the old format use TOMCATLEGACY_ patterns

  • junos

    • integer fields (e.g. juniper.srx.elapsed_time) are captured as integer values

  • linux-syslog

    • SYSLOG5424LINE captures (overwrites) the message field instead of using a custom field name
    • regardless of the format used, in ECS mode, timestamps are always captured as timestamp
    • fields such as log.syslog.facility.code and process.pid are converted to integers

  • mcollective

    • mcollective-patterns file was removed, it’s all one mcollective in ECS mode
    • MCOLLECTIVE's process.pid (pid previously) is not type-casted to an integer

  • nagios

    • numeric fields such as nagios.log.attempt are converted to integer values in ECS mode

  • rails

    • request duration times from RAILS3 log will be converted to floating point values

  • squid

    • SQUID3's duration http.response status_code and bytes are type-casted to int
    • SQUID3 pattern won’t capture null (-) user.name or squid.response.content_type
    • Fix: allow to parse SQUID log with status 0 (#298)
    • Fix: handle optional server address (#298)
    • Fix: Java stack trace’s JAVAFILE to better match generated names
    • Fix: match Information/INFORMATION in LOGLEVEL #274
    • Fix: NAGIOS TIMEPERIOD unknown (from/to) field matching #275
    • Fix: HTTPD access log parse failure on missing response #282

    • Fix: UNIXPATH to avoid DoS on long paths with unmatching chars #292

      For longer paths, a non matching character towards the end of the path would cause the RegExp engine a long time to abort.
With this change we're also explicit about not supporting relative paths (using the `PATH` pattern), these won't be properly matched.
    • Feat: allow UNIXPATH to match non-ascii chars #291
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