The exec source

The exec source provides a mechanism to run a command outside of Flume and then turn the output into Flume events. To use the exec source, set the type property to exec:

agent.sources.s1.type=exec

All sources in Flume are required to specify the list of channels to write events to using the channels (plural) property. This is a space-separated list of one or more channel names:

agent.sources.s1.channels=c1

The only other required parameter is the command property, which tells Flume what command to pass to the operating system. For instance:

agent.sources=s1
agent.sources.s1.channels=c1
agent.sources.s1.type=exec
agent.sources.s1.command=tail -F /var/log/app.log

Here I have configured a single source s1 for an agent named agent. The source, an exec source, will tail the /var/log/app.log file and follow any rotations outside applications may perform on that logfile. All events are written to the c1 channel. This is an example of one of the workarounds for the lack of TailSource in...