The out_file TimeSliced Output plugin writes events to files. By default, it creates files on a daily basis (around 00:10). This means that when you first import records using the plugin, no file is created immediately. The file will be created when the time_slice_format condition has been met. To change the output frequency, please modify the time_slice_format value.

Example Configuration

out_file is included in Fluentd's core. No additional installation process is required.

<match pattern>
  @type file
  path /var/log/fluent/myapp
  time_slice_format %Y%m%d
  time_slice_wait 10m
  time_format %Y%m%dT%H%M%S%z
  compress gzip
  utc
</match>

Please see the Config File article for the basic structure and syntax of the configuration file.

Parameters

type (required)

The value must be file.

path (required)

The Path of the file. The actual path is path + time + ".log". The time portion is determined by the time_slice_format parameter, descried below.

The path parameter is used as buffer_path in this plugin.

Initially, you may see a file which looks like \"/path/to/file.20140101.log.b4eea2c8166b147a0\". This is an intermediate buffer file (\"b4eea2c8166b147a0\" identifies the buffer). Once the content of the buffer has been completely flushed, you will see the output file without the trailing identifier.

append

The flushed chunk is appended to existence file or not. The default is false. By default, out_file flushes each chunk to different path.

# append false
log.20140608_0.log
log.20140608_1.log
log.20140609_0.log
log.20140609_1.log

This makes parallel file processing easy. But if you want to disable this behaviour, you can disable it by setting append true.

# append true
log.20140608.log
log.20140609.log

format

The format of the file content. The default is out_file.

See formatter article for more detail.

time_format

The format of the time written in files. The default format is ISO-8601.

utc

Uses UTC for path formatting. The default format is localtime.

compress

Compresses flushed files using gzip. No compression is performed by default.

symlink_path

Create symlink to temporary buffered file when buffer_type is file. No symlink is created by default. This is useful for tailing file content to check logs.

Time Sliced Output Parameters

For advanced usage, you can tune Fluentd's internal buffering mechanism with these parameters.

time_slice_format

The time format used as part of the file name. The following characters are replaced with actual values when the file is created:

• \%Y: year including the century (at least 4 digits)

• \%m: month of the year (01..12)

• \%d: Day of the month (01..31)

• \%H: Hour of the day, 24-hour clock (00..23)

• \%M: Minute of the hour (00..59)

• \%S: Second of the minute (00..60)

The default format is %Y%m%d%H, which creates one file per hour.

time_slice_wait

The amount of time Fluentd will wait for old logs to arrive. This is used to account for delays in logs arriving to your Fluentd node. The default wait time is 10 minutes ('10m'), where Fluentd will wait until 10 minutes past the hour for any logs that occurred within the past hour.

For example, when splitting files on an hourly basis, a log recorded at 1:59 but arriving at the Fluentd node between 2:00 and 2:10 will be uploaded together with all the other logs from 1:00 to 1:59 in one transaction, avoiding extra overhead. Larger values can be set as needed.

buffer_type

The buffer type is file by default (buf_file). The memory (buf_memory) buffer type can be chosen as well. If you use file buffer type, buffer_path parameter is required.

buffer_queue_limit, buffer_chunk_limit

The length of the chunk queue and the size of each chunk, respectively. Please see the Buffer Plugin Overview article for the basic buffer structure. The default values are 64 and 8m, respectively. The suffixes "k" (KB), "m" (MB), and "g" (GB) can be used for buffer_chunk_limit.

flush_interval

The interval between data flushes. The default is 60s. The suffixes "s" (seconds), "m" (minutes), and "h" (hours) can be used.

flush_at_shutdown

If set to true, Fluentd waits for the buffer to flush at shutdown. By default, it is set to true for Memory Buffer and false for File Buffer.

retry_wait, max_retry_wait

The initial and maximum intervals between write retries. The default values are 1.0 and unset (no limit). The interval doubles (with +/-12.5% randomness) every retry until max_retry_wait is reached.

Since td-agent will retry 17 times before giving up by default (see the retry_limit parameter for details), the sleep interval can be up to approximately 131072 seconds (roughly 36 hours) in the default configurations.

retry_limit, disable_retry_limit

The limit on the number of retries before buffered data is discarded, and an option to disable that limit (if true, the value of retry_limit is ignored and there is no limit). The default values are 17 and false (not disabled). If the limit is reached, buffered data is discarded and the retry interval is reset to its initial value (retry_wait).

num_threads

The number of threads to flush the buffer. This option can be used to parallelize writes into the output(s) designated by the output plugin. The default is 1.

slow_flush_log_threshold

Same as Buffered Output but default value is changed to 40.0 seconds.

log_level option

The log_level option allows the user to set different levels of logging for each plugin. The supported log levels are: fatal, error, warn, info, debug, and trace.

Please see the logging article for further details.

If this article is incorrect or outdated, or omits critical information, please let us know. Fluentd is a open source project under Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). All components are available under the Apache 2 License.