topic Re: Unix Time Math for a Field in Splunk Search

Unix Time Math for a Field

kholleran — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 20:21:49 GMT

Hello,

I currently am doing a search that uses a unix time as a field. What I want to do, is do something like this at search time:

source="mysource" my_unix_time < (unix_time(now)-6 Months)

Effectively, I want to say, keep only entries where this field's date time is greater than six months (not the actual time the data was logged, this specific field). I am converting the unix time to something readable with convert timeformat="%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" ctime(my_unix_time) so I am not sure if date manipulation is easier after this or before.

Thanks for any help.

Kevin

Re: Unix Time Math for a Field

Lowell — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 21:48:20 GMT

If you are running 4.1 you can use the relative_time() eval function, so your expression could be written:

 source="mysource" | where my_unix_time < relative_time(time(), "-6mon") | convert timeformat="%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" ctime(my_unix_time)

Note that time() is the wall-clock time, where as the now() eval function is based on the time when the search was started (or was scheduled to start).

Docs: Functions for eval and where

Re: Unix Time Math for a Field

gkanapathy — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 07:22:58 GMT

I'm assuming my_unix_time is not equal to the event timestamp?