topic Re: Extract data from text file without Headers in Splunk Search

Extract data from text file without Headers

shilpi — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 22:48:40 GMT

I have a text with values separated by spaces.This file does not have any headers. I need to add headers to this file and use this file in splunk. I can not manually do that as I will be getting a similar file every 15 minutes daily. Is there any way to do it using field extraction or something else in splunk?

Re: Extract data from text file without Headers

lukejadamec — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 22:55:08 GMT

Space separated files are easy to index if the files all have the same field composition.
If you could put a header in every file, would it always be the same header? If so, post it.

Re: Extract data from text file without Headers

shilpi — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 23:11:41 GMT

Also, please let me know if this can be done from splunk forwarders or do we need to go to splunk searchhead.Please let me know in case I need to do any changes from splunk UI as well

Re: Extract data from text file without Headers

shilpi — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 23:12:31 GMT

Yeah header will always be the same

Re: Extract data from text file without Headers

lukejadamec — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 23:15:51 GMT

Can you post the header, or some obfuscated reference header that you'll understand when we stick it in a configuration example?

Re: Extract data from text file without Headers

lukejadamec — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 23:33:43 GMT

The inputs.conf file needs to be on the forwarder that is monitoring the log directory. The props.conf and transforms.conf should be in the splunk\etc\system\local\ directory of the indexer. If those files don’t exist, then create them – make sure they have a .conf extension and not a .conf.txt extension.
You may need to further refine the configs, but if so you’ll need to provide more information.

inputs.conf

[monitor://blankpathtofiledirectory]
disabled = false
index = default
sourcetype = yourblanksourcetype

props.conf

[yourblanksourcetype]
SHOULD_LINEMERGE = false
TIME_FORMAT = blank
MAX_TIMESTAMP_LOOKAHEAD = blank
REPORT-spaced = spacedfields

transforms.conf

[spacedfields]
DELIMS = “ “
FIELDS =  list of comma separated fields

Re: Extract data from text file without Headers

kristian_kolb — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 10:04:23 GMT

why the explicit use of 'blank'?

Re: Extract data from text file without Headers

lukejadamec — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 15:59:31 GMT

So the person asking the question knows where information is missing.