Getting Data In

How to edit the clientName across all forwarders in my environment?

s0rbeto
Explorer

Hi everyone,

We have an environment of about 3000 forwarders installed. Recently, I was told to edit the clientName on all forwarders. I learned that in order to do that, I would need to define clientName under "deploymentclient.conf", but then I realized our current configuration did not have deploymentclient.conf. My challenge is to make naming changes across 3000 forwarders. They want the clientName to be renamed as their hostname followed by application, vlan id, ip ... etc.

How can we start? Is anyone kind enough to share their ideas on this? I was thinking to create deploymentclient.conf and just put a clientName field in it. Do you think that will work?

Thank you

1 Solution

muebel
SplunkTrust
SplunkTrust

Hi s0rbeto, you'll have at least one version of deploymentclient.conf in place, because that is where the config is kept that allows the forwarder to connect to the deployment server. The starting place would be to see what is currently being set for clientName. You could check the "forwarder management" section on the Deployment Server. It will list all the client there, along with their hostname and clientName.

If the clientName is being defined in $SPLUNKHOME/etc/system/local/deploymentclient.conf, then you will have to take some more steps to be able to get out from under that. If it is being defined in an app ($SPLUNKHOME/etc/apps/someapp), then you could take advantage of Splunk configuration precedence and push out a new app by serverclass that is called something like ZZ_webservers-dc1, and ZZ_appservers-dc2 and the like.

Each app will have a distinct clientName as granular as you want to get it. clientName = server1-db-vlan30-id123-ip192.168.1.1 would give you great options for crafting whitelists and blacklists to define serverclasses.

Let me know how this works out 😄

View solution in original post

afret2007
Path Finder

Your question does not specify windows or Linux and sounds like you do not have a deployment server in place. Once you have setup and configured a Deployment Server you can create your deploymentclient.conf file and put this in it. This was done for windows. I was in the exact same predicament as you are now.

[deployment-client]
clientName = $COMPUTERNAME-whatever you want to have after your clientname

[target-broker:deploymentServer]
targetUri = yourDeploymentServerName:8089

Once created, push out the deploymentclient.conf file via MSI to all your forwarders you want updated (push different versions of the file depending on what you named the computer and what it is used for) to your \Program Files\SplunkUniversalForwarder\etc\system\local directory on your forwarders. Once the forwarder service has been restarted you will be able to see the forwarders via deployment server UI and will have the Client Names you wished to have depending on hostname and what they are used for. In future you then can make changes via app update process. I hope this helps. It is pretty straight forward this way.

afret2007.

afret2007
Path Finder

I need to modify my answer. Please replace $COMPUTERNAME with $HOSTNAME. To reiterate, I did this for windows. The environment variable that Splunk uses for windows is $HOSTNAME. I do not know if it is the same for Linux for we do not have any forwarders installed on Linux systems.

afret2007

0 Karma

brent_weaver
Builder

Hey there... Just stubbed my toe on this post. I had to do the same thing and I used the splunk deployment server to do it. In my case I had to do it to windows servers and I wrote a powershell script that gets executed once (with interval=-1).

If this is in fact windows here is a one liner to replace text in any file:

PS C:\Users\597> cat .\test.txt
Brent is not replaced
PS C:\Users\597> $(gc .\test.txt).Replace("Brent","Alan")  |sc .\test.txt
PS C:\Users\597> cat .\test.txt
Alan is not replaced
PS C:\Users\597>

So use this one-liner to replace text in a file right inline.

Hope this trick helps.

0 Karma

muebel
SplunkTrust
SplunkTrust

Hi s0rbeto, you'll have at least one version of deploymentclient.conf in place, because that is where the config is kept that allows the forwarder to connect to the deployment server. The starting place would be to see what is currently being set for clientName. You could check the "forwarder management" section on the Deployment Server. It will list all the client there, along with their hostname and clientName.

If the clientName is being defined in $SPLUNKHOME/etc/system/local/deploymentclient.conf, then you will have to take some more steps to be able to get out from under that. If it is being defined in an app ($SPLUNKHOME/etc/apps/someapp), then you could take advantage of Splunk configuration precedence and push out a new app by serverclass that is called something like ZZ_webservers-dc1, and ZZ_appservers-dc2 and the like.

Each app will have a distinct clientName as granular as you want to get it. clientName = server1-db-vlan30-id123-ip192.168.1.1 would give you great options for crafting whitelists and blacklists to define serverclasses.

Let me know how this works out 😄

Richfez
SplunkTrust
SplunkTrust

Can you search for clientName now in Splunk? What does it return? I see what it is you are trying to get it to return, but what's the actual reason for this? Where will it be used and to what effect?

I ask because... The clientName field is, from my understanding (and a quick check at the docs and my own Splunk install to confirm), the clientName that the Deployment Server can see and use - it's not searchable in "regular splunk". But if you don't have a deploymentclient.conf on those UFs already, then you aren't using the deployment server, and if you aren't using a DS then setting clientName probably won't change anything anyone will see.

There may be other more useful ways to get this done. Maybe use hostname directly? Perhaps build a lookup to add that information to events? Use some other field or fields to create a clientName? If we knew why you/they wanted "clientName" set to something specific, we could probably make a good stab at finding one of these alternative ways of getting it done.

0 Karma

s0rbeto
Explorer

thanks for the info rich

I am not sure if my deploymentclient.conf is there, we have a master server, i was looking at one of the app under deployment-apps ... i did not see any deploymentclient.conf in there, my suspect was deploymentclient.conf only generated in the "forwarder agent", not the master server, am i right?

I am pretty new to splunk, i got hired at the wrong time, the entire IT team just had the tranining, right now i am the administrator, one of my application is splunk.

i was told to change the clientName which you can see under the "Forwarder Management > Clients". My idea is to write a script and pack the script under app and have it deployed to all the forwarders ... the script will update the "clientName" under the deploymentclient.conf remotely.

Any idea? thanks for all the information, i appreciate your help

0 Karma

Richfez
SplunkTrust
SplunkTrust

I am not aware of an automated, easy way to do this, and don't have a whole lot to offer as help. I will ask around next week in the IRC channel and in a few other places and see if someone has a good idea.

Meanwhile, though, a couple of things to think about-

First, think on what the clientName should be set to and how you will tell what name to set which forewarder to use. At some point each UF will have to get a unique name, so you are going to have to potentially touch every single one; even if you have a script, you still have to tell it - for each one - what the name should be. You could perhaps use a csv file with hostname and clientname in it, find the hostname of the system in it and then pull the clientname to use. You wouldn't have to touch them all doing it this way (possibly), but you will still have to create a 3,000 row spreadsheet.

Then, how will you write the actual value in for clientname? In *nix, you can probably use sed or perl to change the existing one or insert a line pretty easily, depending on if it exists or not in the first place.

In DOS/CMD, this may be a bit harder. You might find it easiest to create the first part and last part of the file (first and last being "before where the clientname goes and after where it goes"), then use a batch file to create the line for the clientname (again, looking up if necessary) and copying the first part, then the clientname line, then the last part into the deploymentclient.conf file.

What I worry about in either case is if you mess it up, you lose that client from your deployment server. You WILL have to touch it again.

Lastly, I'm sure this will be painful enough that you'll never want to do it again. Because of that, I think you should make very sure the results will do everything you/they need. Take your time planning not only how you are doing it, but what exactly you are doing and how you are naming everything.

Sorry - this is REALLY "lastly" - if you do figure out a way, please post that back as an answer, then mark your own answer as answered! This will help the next person who needs to do this and comes looking in Answers for some help!

0 Karma
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