# rsyslog

12 Hacker News commenters recommended rsyslog and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended as a solid, lightweight syslog daemon that handles high message volumes and forwards logs to remote machines. The most common caveat is that the configuration is hard to get right.

## Why people recommend it

- Solid, mature and reliable (2 comments): "Both syslog products you mention are solid and mature, and absolutely has an important place in any modern environment." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49426805)) "its so lightweight and simple and reliable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49425509))
- Forwards logs to remote machines (2 comments): "It can keep up with millions of messages per second, route them to higher order services for indexing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49424093)) "one simple and direct way to distribute logs to remote machines" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48093932))
- Simple to set up (2 comments): "On Debian, install rsyslogd instead - it's that simple." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49300207)) "configuring rsyslog is extremely easy" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46116316))
- Pairs with or replaces journald (2 comments): "I like how RedHat distros have it setup, where journald collects the logs, but rsyslog is there parsing them" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46799843)) "I generally replace journald with rsyslogd on systemd setups." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49295777))

## What people warn about

- Configuration is a nightmare (2 comments): "It works reliably, but the config is an absolute nightmare, documentation is a mixed bag" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47534710)) "I'll forever have nightmares from debugging RainerScript mixed with the declarative config" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46397891))
- Documentation is a mixed bag (2 comments): "It works reliably, but the config is an absolute nightmare, documentation is a mixed bag" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47534710)) "even the rsyslog documentation starts out with UDP for remote delivery" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49426950))
- Seen as outdated next to OpenTelemetry (2 comments): "I probably wouldn't go with rsyslog as my default choice anymore since the world is moving on to OpenTelemetry." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49427178)) "I would not say a "Syslog" server belongs in a modern stack." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49424030))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [systemd-journald](https://hackerapproved.com/p/systemd-journald.md): 11 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "rsyslog", https://hackerapproved.com/p/rsyslog/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).