How to use $HOSTNAME Linux environment variables in forwarder's inputs.conf to identify servers by hostname?

[ivangutev]

Hello,

I am trying to use the $HOSTNAME Linux environment variable in inputs.conf of splunkforwarder, because I would like to identify servers by hostname. I wonder is that possible and how, because I have tried already to set a HOST variable and to pass the content into host = $(HOST)-webserver but somehow that is not working.

Can you help me please?

Thanks,
Ivan

[ivangutev · Accepted solution]

I found a solution. If I do not set the host in inputs.conf, it will use the hostname of the server and therefore I can identify it this way.