Tech Topics

Logstash-Forwarder 0.4.0 Released

I am happy to announce that logstash-forwarder version 0.4.0 is now available! This is mostly a maintenance release, but before we talk about that, I want to first address some of the history and problems this project has had.

It's been too long since the last release of this project, and for that, I am sorry. We didn't adequately focus on improvements to the forwarder. This neglect got bad, and even lead me to delete what I thought was a broken package repository only to find it was in use by many folks. Sorry about that. As humans, we sometimes make mistakes. Do things, mess up, try to do better next time!

In the meantime, we want to provide a stable and happy experience with the logstash-forwarder, while we experiment with alternative implementations. Logstash-forwarder 0.4.0 is one such stability release, so what's new in it?

Features new since the last release:

  • A new -quiet flag to hide any informational/notification.
  • SSLv3 is no longer supported; TLS 1.0+ is required (compatible with Logstash 1.4.2+).
  • SSL certificates now require a matching hostname or IP SAN for the server.
  • Much better support for Windows.
  • OpenBSD support.
  • Comments are now allowed in the config file using a hash sign, like “# this is a comment".
  • The -config flag can take a directory containing many config files that are merged together when loaded. Useful for config management.

Bug fixes:

  • Idle files are now closed to save resources. The setting controlling the idle time is called “dead time".
  • A read reaching EOF now correctly waits for a line terminator. Buggy behavior was emitting a partial line.
  • Following many different files now correctly tracks them. Buggy behavior was to lose state on some set of files.

Note: This release works well with Logstash 1.5.0 RC1 and has fixes that work with lumberjack input.

You can see the detailed changelog here.

Please download logstash-forwarder 0.4.0 and let us know what you think on GitHub. If you'd like to see what we have in store for the future of logstash-forwarder, visit our roadmap page.