topic configuration files modified at restart causing version control software to redeploy in loop in Deployment Architecture

configuration files modified at restart causing version control software to redeploy in loop

mataharry — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 23:14:05 GMT

Hi
I am maintaining my splunk config with chef ( or puppet).

But after pushing my config, and restarting splunk, some files are modified (server.conf)
This is causing a new deployment to occur in loop.

Is it normal, how to avoid that ?

Re: configuration files modified at restart causing version control software to redeploy in loop

yannK — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 23:20:33 GMT

This is a known behavior in splunk, when you push configuration.

The files containing clear passwords are encrypted at startup using the local secret key. So If you are using version control, the files you pushed may be modified differently after being pushed, causing a loop of deployment.

The files containing passwords are :

$SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local/server.conf
```
[sslConfig]

sslKeysfilePassword = $1$uRefsdTFJSp
```
FYI the default value before encryption is "password".
$SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local/authentication.conf
may also contains the ldap bind user password.

The local secret key is $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/auth/splunk.secret

and this file is generated during the first start of splunk (therefore may be different on each instance)
This is the same for the local certificates in $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/auth/)

The solution is to

1 - have the same splunk.secret on your servers

2 - when you modify your configurations files, have them encrypted using the same splunk.secret ( by starting splunk once on an instance) before pushing them.

Re: configuration files modified at restart causing version control software to redeploy in loop

yannK — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 02:40:39 GMT

remark, in the server.conf there is another unique value, the GUID.
example :
[general] guid = 163F9EF5-B334-4A32-933E-801F4F0D6B90

It is used for the license-slaves to identify to the license-master.
SO If you are using a license-master, make sure that each server.conf is unique per license-slave.