This short article describes how to configure syslog-ng in order to store the logs into a MySQL backend. This adds more flexibility when performing log analysis, log searching and correlation.
Installing MySQL
MySQL can be compiled from source and installed using the FreeBSD ports collection:

# cd /usr/ports/databases/mysql41-server/
# make install distclean

Configuring MySQL
Use the following commands to create the [...]

Enabling remote syslog logging with Linksys WRT54G and OpenWRT White Russian RC3 is as simple as storing the IP of the remote syslog server into the log_ipaddr NVRAM variable:

nvram set log_ipaddr=A.B.C.D
nvram commit
reboot

log_ipaddr is used by /etc/init.d/rcS startup script to launch a local syslog daemon with option “-R “:

#!/bin/sh
syslog_ip=$(nvram get log_ipaddr)
ipcalc -s “$syslog_ip” || syslog_ip=”"
syslogd -C [...]

FreeBSD uses syslog by default. However, syslog is very old and inflexible, so I decided to replace it with syslog-ng. syslog-ng syntax is far more easier to read and understand than syslog’s one.
syslog-ng uses the following elements to determine what to log and where to log it:

Source: Defines where log entries do come from. For [...]