topic Re: Timezone issue in Getting Data In

Timezone issue

gilliers — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 20:30:43 GMT

Hello,

I have a timezone issue that I don't understand.

I have two set of indexed logs in different indexes, indexed by the same indexer. The sourcetype is the same for both. I don't explicitly modify the timezone anywhere.

For the first index the _time shown is the right one (same as the one in the log itself).Server 1 - _time OK
For the second index the _time is 1 hour behind since the daylight saving time a few days ago. If I look at the _time field, it has however the right date_hour but it shows something different.Server2 - _time wrong

I checked on the servers where the logs are generated but they are running the same (and right) timezone: CET.

I am lost about this issue, any suggestions on where I should look?

Re: Timezone issue

PickleRick — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 21:07:13 GMT

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.2.3/Knowledge/Usedefaultfields#Default_datetime_fields

"The datetime values are the literal values parsed from the event when it is indexed, regardless of its timezone"

That's why I'd rather believe _time (if your time extraction is working properly) than date_* fields.

Re: Timezone issue

gilliers — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 21:10:21 GMT

Hello,

Thanks for your reply.

If I look at the raw datas, the datetime value in the log entry is the one expected, not the wrong one (16:27:16 for the second server, not 15:27:16).

Re: Timezone issue

PickleRick — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 21:24:38 GMT

Yes. That's understandable. The date_hour field should correspond to the hour part from the raw event. "local" in date_zone suggests that the timestamp in raw event didn't have the timezone information.

Therefore - if you say that you don't explicitly manipulate timezone - the event must have been parsed according to the local time zone of the HF or indexer. And now the question I cannot answer is whether the data in the raw event is in your local timezone and is not recalculated correctly by the parser or is it sent with a wrong timezone.

Anyway, it looks that some explicit TZ setting could be useful.

Re: Timezone issue

gilliers — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 08:45:12 GMT

Hello,

Thank you for your replies.

Finally the "issue" was a bug in Splunk version, by restarting the universal forwarders all went back to normal.

I'm planning the upgrade right now so it should'nt happen again.

Good day.