Syslog Priority Decoder: PRI to Facility and Severity

This syslog priority decoder turns the number in angle brackets at the start of a syslog message, such as <134>, into its facility and severity, and works the other way round. It runs entirely in your browser: nothing you type is sent to our server.

How PRI works

PRI = facility × 8 + severity. <134> is facility 16 (local0) and severity 6 (info). The highest valid value is 191 (local7.debug). Network devices often let you choose the facility (Cisco logging facility local6) so you can sort their messages on the syslog server.

Using the result

# rsyslog: all local0 messages at warning or worse to their own file
local0.warning    /var/log/network.log
# send a test message
logger -p local0.warning -t test "hello"
# journal: errors and worse from one facility
journalctl -p err SYSLOG_FACILITY=16

For finding logs on the server, see Linux server log file locations and journalctl commands.

How we checked it

We checked the decoder on 11-12 October 2026 with RFC 3164 and RFC 5424 sample messages (including the <165> example from RFC 5424), out-of-range values and the reverse encoding.

Frequently asked questions