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8. Red Hat Enterprise Linux & CentOS

8.1. Installing

  1. Download the appropriate NXLog installation file from the NXLog website.

    1. Log in to your account, then click My account at the top of the page.

    2. Under the Downloads › NXLog Enterprise Edition files tab, choose the correct file for the target platform.

      Table 13. Available RHEL/CentOS Files
      Platform Archive

      RHEL 6 or CentOS 6

      nxlog-4.6.4661_rhel6_x86_64.tar.bz2

      RHEL 7 or CentOS 7

      nxlog-4.6.4661_rhel7_x86_64.tar.bz2

      Generic RPM

      nxlog-4.6.4661_generic_rpm_x86_64.rpm
      Note

      The RHEL 6 and RHEL 7 archives above each contain several RPMs (see Packages in a RHEL Archive below). These RPMs have dependencies on system-provided RPMs.

      The generic RPM above contains all the libraries (such as libpcre and libexpat) that are needed by NXLog, the only dependency is libc. However, some modules are not available (im_checkpoint, for example). The advantage of the generic RPM is that it can be installed on most RPM-based Linux distributions.

  2. Transfer the file to the target server using SFTP or a similar secure method.

  3. Log in to the target server and extract the contents of the archive (unless you are using the generic package):

    # tar -xf nxlog-4.6.4661_rhel7.x86_64.tar.bz2
    Table 14. Packages in a RHEL Archive
    Package Description

    nxlog-4.6.4661_rhel7.x86_64.rpm

    The main NXLog package

    nxlog-checkpoint-4.6.4661_rhel7.x86_64.rpm

    Provides the im_checkpoint module

    nxlog-dbi-4.6.4661_rhel7.x86_64.rpm

    Provides the im_dbi and om_dbi modules

    nxlog-odbc-4.6.4661_rhel7.x86_64.rpm

    Provides the im_odbc and om_odbc modules

    nxlog-perl-4.6.4661_rhel7.x86_64.rpm

    Provides the xm_perl, im_perl, and om_perl modules

    nxlog-wmi-4.6.4661_rhel7.x86_64.rpm

    Provides the im_wmi module

    nxlog-wseventing-4.6.4661_rhel7.x86_64.rpm

    Provides the im_wseventing module

    nxlog-zmq-4.6.4661_rhel7.x86_64.rpm

    Provides the im_zmq and om_zmq modules

  4. Install the NXLog package(s) and their dependencies.

    1. Optional: To change the NXLog user and group for the installation, set the NXLOG_USER and NXLOG_GROUP environment variables. The specified user and group will be created, used for the User and Group directives in nxlog.conf, and used for the ownership of some directories under /opt/nxlog. Specifying an already existing user or group is not supported. The created user and group will be deleted on NXLog removal.

      # export NXLOG_USER=nxlog2
# export NXLOG_GROUP=nxlog2

    2. If you are installing the nxlog-zmq package, enable the EPEL repository so ZeroMQ dependencies will be available:

      # yum install -y epel-release

    3. Use yum to install the required NXLog packages (or the generic package) and dependencies.

      # yum install nxlog-4.6.4661_rhel7.x86_64.rpm

  5. Configure NXLog by editing /opt/nxlog/etc/nxlog.conf. General information about configuring NXLog can be found in Configuration. For more details about configuring NXLog to collect logs on Linux, see the GNU/Linux summary.

  6. Verify the configuration file syntax.

    # /opt/nxlog/bin/nxlog -v
2017-03-17 08:05:06 INFO configuration OK

  7. Start the service using the service command:

    # service nxlog start

  8. Check that the NXLog service is running.

    # service nxlog status
nxlog (pid  9218) is running...

8.2. Upgrading

To upgrade an NXLog installation to the latest release, use yum as in the installation instructions above.

# yum install nxlog-4.6.4661_rhel7.x86_64.rpm

To replace a trial installation of NXLog Enterprise Edition with a licensed copy of the same version, follow the installation instructions.

Note
 The same user and group will be used for the upgrade as was used for the original installation (see installation step 4 above). Changing to a different user and group during upgrade is not supported.

8.3. Uninstalling

To uninstall NXLog, use yum remove. To remove any packages that were dependencies of NXLog but are not required by any other packages, include the --setopt=clean_requirements_on_remove=1 option. Verify the operation before confirming!

# yum remove 'nxlog-*'
Note
 This procedure may not remove all files that were created in order to configure NXLog, or that were created as a result of NXLog’s logging operations. To find these files, consult the configuration files that were used with NXLog and check the installation directory (/opt/nxlog).

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