Can Syslog Reliably Detect MetaDefender Core Process Crashes?

Question

Can “warning” or “error” Syslog messages be used as a reliable signal that critical MetaDefender Core processes (e.g., ometascan.exe, engineprocess.exe, nginx.exe, postgres.exe) have crashed or become unresponsive? If not, are there any crash events that appear in Syslog?

Short answer

No. Do not rely on Syslog severity (warning/error) to detect process crashes or hangs. A hard crash (e.g., OOM, SIGKILL, power loss) often prevents the application from emitting any Syslog line at all. Even when errors are logged, they’re not guaranteed to uniquely indicate a crash of a specific process.

Use direct process/service monitoring at the OS level and/or infrastructure health checks.

Why Syslog isn’t reliable for crash detection

• Crashes are abrupt. On OOM/SIGKILL or sudden exits, the process cannot log a “we are crashing” message.
• Severity isn’t specific. “warning”/“error” messages can reflect transient conditions, timeouts, or engine-specific issues—not a confirmed crash.
• Log pipeline can be affected. If logging/forwarding is colocated, a crash or high load can drop/skip messages.

Recommended approach (process-level monitoring)

Processes to monitor

• ometascan.exe – main MetaDefender Core process
• engineprocess.exe – engine worker processes (ClamAV may appear as clamd.exe)
• nginx.exe / nginx – web front end
• postgres.exe / postgres – database (when bundled)

Windows

• Service/Process checks
  • PowerShell (example

$names = 'ometascan','engineprocess','nginx','postgres'

$down = $names | ForEach-Object {

  if (-not (Get-Process -Name $_ -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)) { $_ }

}

if ($down) { Write-Error "Missing processes: $($down -join ', ')" }

• • Configure Service Recovery (Services → Recovery tab) to restart on failure and run a script to alert.
• Crash signals you can forward to Syslog
  • Windows Event Log → Application / System (e.g., Application Error / Service Control Manager events).
  • Use an agent (e.g., NxLog/Winlogbeat) to forward these OS-level crash/stop events to your SIEM/Syslog.

Linux

• Process checks

  • pgrep -x ometascan || echo "ometascan missing"
  • pgrep -x nginx || echo "nginx missing"
  • pgrep -x postgres || echo "postgres missing"

• systemd watchdog (if applicable)

  • Use systemctl is-active <unit> and configure Restart=on-failure.

• Crash signals you can forward to Syslog

  • journald / rsyslog can send kernel/app crashes (e.g., segfault, OOM killer) to your SIEM.

Tip: Also monitor UI/API liveness (TCP/HTTP) and queue/backlog metrics where available. A process might be up but unresponsive.

What Syslog is good for (and not)

Minimal alerting examples

Windows (scheduled every minute)

$must Have = 'ometascan','engineprocess','nginx','postgres'

$missing = $mustHave | Where-Object { -not (Get-Process -Name $_ -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) }

if ($missing) {

  # send to your alerting endpoint here

  Write-Error "MetaDefender Core critical processes down: $($missing -join ', ')"

}

Linux (cron every minute)

missing=()

for p in ometascan engineprocess nginx postgres; do

  pgrep -x "$p" >/dev/null || missing+=("$p")

done

[ ${#missing[@]} -gt 0 ] && echo "Missing: ${missing[*]}" >&2

Conclusion

• Do not treat Syslog warning/error messages as a dependable indicator of MetaDefender Core process crashes.
• Do implement OS-level process/service monitoring and forward OS crash/service events (Windows Event Log, journald/rsyslog) to your SIEM for alerting and correlation.