Alert emails at every splunk restart

[glitchcowboy]

I have the following savedsearch that sends an alert for an old event every time I restart splunk (indexer/search head). Any ideas why this is or how to make it stop

[Some CRITICAL Alert]
action.email = 1
action.email.inline = 1
action.email.sendpdf = 1
action.email.to = anemail@overthere.com
alert.digest_mode = False
alert.expires = 12h
alert.severity = 5
alert.suppress = 0
alert.suppress.period = 30s
alert.track = 1
cron_schedule = * * * * *
dispatch.earliest_time = rt
dispatch.latest_time = rt
displayview = flashtimeline_excel
enableSched = 1
quantity = 0
relation = greater than
request.ui_dispatch_view = flashtimeline_excel
search = eventtype="XYZ-Eventtype"
vsid = xxxxxxx


[jspears]

Do the email headers indicate it's a new email every time? I would first suspect the simple explanation, a misguided MTU re-sending the same email - maybe there's a queue file on the Splunk server that your MTU is unable to remove or something.

How old is the event that triggered the original alert? I'm wondering if there might be a search artifact sticking around in $SPLUNK_HOME/var/run/splunk/dispatch.

[glitchcowboy]

No, it wasn't a misguided MTU, because it happened at every splunk restart, not MTU/MTA restart. I never found the cause, but eventually it just went away