topic Overriding TZ for source in Getting Data In

Overriding TZ for source

mikelanghorst — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 23:00:13 GMT

I have a JBoss/Tomcat access log that has an incorrect Timezone configuration, causing Splunk to set the time to an hour ahead.

172.21.138.35 - - [09/Apr/2012:15:51:56.783 -0800] "HEAD /index.html HTTP/1.1" 200 0

The server is correctly set at PDT, but something is setting this log to stay at -0800. The developer isn't sure where this is set, and would take some time to correct even when we do find the location. How do I properly change the time for this source? It occurs on several hosts (dev/test/staging/production), but only for this source file.

I've set props.conf on the indexer to:
[source::/my/app/path/localhost_access*]
TZ=PDT

Is this incorrect? It didn't change the behavior and I verified with btool that it's in effect.

Re: Overriding TZ for source

ChrisG — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 23:26:17 GMT

Splunk uses zoneinfo TZ database values (see http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/4.3.1/data/Applytimezoneoffsetstotimestamps and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_zoneinfo_timezones ). Did you try US/Pacific for the TZ value?

Re: Overriding TZ for source

mikelanghorst — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 23:31:37 GMT

Yes, I just tried TZ=US/Pacific, but no change.

» 4/9/12
5:29:41.000 PM

[09/Apr/2012:16:29:41 -0800] 172.27.140.119 user1 - HTTP/1.1 POST 200 8969 98 /app/unitSubstitution/loadJSON

Re: Overriding TZ for source

dwaddle — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 00:27:04 GMT

Some additional things worth trying:

First, set an explicit TIME_FORMAT and MAX_TIMESTAMP_LOOKAHEAD in addition to a TZ for this source. Make the TIME_FORMAT and MAX_TIMESTAMP_LOOKAHEAD explicitly ignore the "-0800" bit, preferably by setting MAX_TIMESTAMP_LOOKAHEAD small enough to where the "-0800" part isn't considered.

If that doesn't work, as hideous as it is you could filter out the "-0800" using a SEDCMD. (I really hope it doesn't come to this)

Re: Overriding TZ for source

mikelanghorst — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:22:56 GMT

Used the data import function on my local instance to set this up. Looks like this will be the answer.

Re: Overriding TZ for source

woodcock — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 03:48:36 GMT

You should be able to use TZ_ALIAS like this:

TZ_ALIAS=-0800=PDT