Can symlink cause Splunk to index files twice?

[mfeeny1]

Due to some inconsistencies in how some of our servers use Symbolic Links (symlinks), we need to understand how Splunk would handle the following situation...

/usr2/wlp_logs is a symlink pointing to /hosting/logs.

If we have the following 2 monitor stanzas in inputs.conf...

[monitor:///usr2/wlp_logs/blah/myapp.log]

[monitor:///hosting/logs/blah/myapp.log]

...would Splunk recognize that these are 2 references to the same file, and index it only once? Or, would myapp.log get indexed twice?

Thx for any clarification / enlightenment.

mfeeny1

[jrodman]

Symbolic links cannot cause splunk to index files twice, unless you make use of crcSalt to force splunk to consider files different via their filenames.

Monitoring both the symbolic link and the target of the link is not a good practice however. You will get uncertain behavior as to which name splunk finds the data under.

[cramasta]

Would like to know this as well.