topic Re: Date code being interpreted incorrectly in Splunk Search

Date code being interpreted incorrectly

lautero — Fri, 11 May 2012 00:12:40 GMT

I had an IBM reporting program exporting CSV data with Splunk reading it correctly for a few hours. During this period, I also exported 30 days worth of historical data, and had it all imported correctly.

As soon as the clock ticked past midnight on the 10th of May, everything started going a bit weird. Events from yesterday (10/May/2012) were interpreted as the 12th of May 2010. Events from today are going in as the 12th of May 2011.

Here is an example of CSV data that worked correctly

devicename,volumename,9/05/12 18:05,

And here is an example of CSV data that did not work correctly

devicename,volumename,11/05/12 09:19

As you can see, the date codes in both are in the same format. One worked correctly, one didn't, and I can't work out why.

The data is picked up with this section of inputs.conf

monitor://C:\IBM\TPC\data\log\reports\splunk_mdiskgrp]
alwaysOpenFile= 1
disabled = false
sourcetype=ibm-tpc-mdg

I've tried in vain to add this kind of thing to the props.conf based on what I found online, with no success. Full disclosure: I have no idea what I'm doing.

[ibm-tpc-mdg]
TIME_FORMAT = %d/%m/%y %H:%M
MAX_TIMESTAMP_LOOKAHEAD = 57
TIME_PREFIX = (?i).*?,(?P<FIELDNAME>\d+/\d+/\d+\s+\d+:\d+)(?=,)

I'm hoping someone has seen this kind of thing before!

Re: Date code being interpreted incorrectly

kristian_kolb — Fri, 11 May 2012 06:33:35 GMT

The TIME_PREFIX should not have a field-extractig regex in it. It should match the text just BEFORE the timestamp starts, but not the timestamp itself.

Try this:

TIME_PREFIX = ^[^,]+,[^,]+,\s*

Hope this helps,

Kristian

Re: Date code being interpreted incorrectly

lautero — Fri, 11 May 2012 06:54:15 GMT

Thanks Kristian, I've given that a shot but it hasn't made any difference.

Re: Date code being interpreted incorrectly

Ayn — Fri, 11 May 2012 07:02:26 GMT

Did you check this after a restart, and only on events that have been indexed after you made your changes? Because the events that are already in the indexed will not be affected by these changes.

Re: Date code being interpreted incorrectly

kristian_kolb — Fri, 11 May 2012 10:25:36 GMT

could you post a couple of actual log events?