Apache Flume Tutorial: An Introduction to Log Collection and Aggregation

Flume Sources: Collecting Data from Various Sources

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Flume is a distributed system that can collect and transport data from various sources to a central location. Flume sources are the components that ingest data from external sources and send them to Flume channels. Flume supports different types of sources, such as:

- Exec source: Executes a command and ingests the output of that command.
- Spooling directory source: Watches a directory for new files and ingests them.
- Kafka source: Consumes messages from a Kafka topic and ingests them.
- HTTP source: Listens for HTTP POST requests and ingests the payload of the requests.
- Twitter source: Connects to the Twitter streaming API and ingests tweets.

Each Flume source has its own configuration properties that specify how to connect to the external source, how to format the data, how to handle errors, etc. Flume sources can also be customized by implementing the Source interface or extending an existing source class.

Conclusion

Flume sources are essential for collecting data from various sources and sending them to Flume channels. Flume provides a variety of built-in sources for common data sources, such as files, Kafka, HTTP, etc. Flume also allows users to create their own custom sources by implementing an interface or extending a class.

FAQs

Q: How do I configure a Flume source?

A: You need to specify the type and properties of the source in the Flume agent configuration file. For example:

agent.sources.exec-source.type = exec
agent.sources.exec-source.command = tail -F /var/log/syslog
agent.sources.exec-source.channels = memory-channel

Q: How do I monitor a Flume source?

A: You can use JMX or HTTP endpoints to monitor the metrics of a Flume source, such as event count, event size, error count, etc. For example:

http://localhost:41414/metrics

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