Getting Data In

After upgrading to Splunk 5, hostname field is incorrectly extracted

awaite_youzee
Explorer

Hello,

I've been running Splunk 4 for about 2 years now, and I've been feeding it using syslog-ng to aggregate and filter incoming logs from remote hosts. This worked wonderfully, as long as we used the "keep_hostname(yes)" option in syslog-ng.

Now that I've upgraded to Splunk 5, Splunk appears to be setting the hostname field in search to the hostname of the log aggregator, not the original host. So now I've got 3 sets of timestamps, 2 hostnames in the log message itself, and an incorrect host field extraction.

How can I get Splunk to properly handle relayed syslog data, and properly extract the fields from the logs?

1 Solution

yannK
Splunk Employee
Splunk Employee

What is your sourcetype?
by default the syslog sourcetype extract the host from the events.

awaite_youzee
Explorer

yes, I set the sourcetype to be "syslog", but it's extracting the hostname of the log aggregator, not the hostname of the source of the log message.

Get Updates on the Splunk Community!

Splunk Enterprise Security(ES) 7.3 is approaching the end of support. Get ready for ...

Hi friends!    At Splunk, your product success is our top priority. With Enterprise Security (ES), we're here ...

Splunk Enterprise Security 8.x: The Essential Upgrade for Threat Detection, ...

Watch On Demand the Tech Talk, and empower your SOC to reach new heights! Duration: 1 hour  Prepare to ...

Splunk Observability for AI

Don’t miss out on an exciting Tech Talk on Splunk Observability for AI!Discover how Splunk’s agentic AI ...