Improve BSD syslogd(8)
by Martin Schütte <info at mschuette dot name>

I will implement the upcoming IETF standards for syslog (http://tools.ietf.org/wg/syslog/). In order of priority: syslog-transport-tls, syslog-protocol, and syslog-sign.

- transport-tls defines the network protocol to send syslog data over TLS (instead of UDP), thus providing a reliable and authenticated transport.
- syslog-protocol defines a new layout for syslog lines; the most important additions are full timestamps (with year and timezone) and structured data with name=value pairs. This enables all programs to declare semantic content (uid, client IP, return codes, etc), making automatic log-monitoring (or at least parsing) much easier.
- syslog-sign defines signature messages to assert authentication, integrity and correct sequencing of syslog messages.

To my knowledge that would be one of the first implementations of these protocols. It will provide NetBSD (and hopefully the other BSDs as well) with an advanced, reliable, and secure syslogd; thus saving admins the time and effort to install custom logging solutions just to get secure transport to their central logserver.