I want to set a different "time zone" from the "time zone" in the log.

[yutaka1005]

If there is a log like below that have time zone "+00:00", how can I set different time zone?

2018/5/9 3:00:00+00:00 this is test

If I input this log, system time zone of my splunk server is JST and difference of UTC and JST is +9 hours, so normally _time will be 2018/5/9 12:00:00.

But I want splunk to recognize this log's time zone is JST, so I configured TZ = Asia/Tokyo in props.conf of HF.
*In my environment there are HF and Indexer

Then I was thinking that _time would be 2018/5/9 3:00:00, but _time wasn't changed.

Did I set TZ in wrong place?
Or if the time zone is described in the log, does it override the TZ setting and there is no way to avoid it?

Please someone tell me about it.

[woodcock]

I know that this question already has an accepted answer but @yutaka1005, there is another nice option.

You can use the TZ_ALIAS to tell the Indexers that when it sees TZ = foo, to swap that out for TZ = bar. In your case 00:00 as JST, probably in a host-based stanza header.

http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/7.1.0/Admin/Propsconf

[xpac]

I never thought of that as a possible use case... Will have to remember it 😉

[woodcock]

My answer is better because it is fully future/fix-proof. When the TZ is fixed to anything other than 00:00, the TZ_ALIAS will stop functioning and the normal interpretation will work. If you remove the TZ from the TIME_FORMAT, then you will have to remember to come around and put it back after the real fix is in place. That is why this answer is a MUCH better option.

[yutaka1005]

Thank you for answer!

I tried to use TZ_ALIAS option, but I couldn't change timestamps...

test data:

2018/5/11 03:00:00+00:00 this is test for TZ_ALIAS

source type:

[test_for_tz]
DATETIME_CONFIG =
NO_BINARY_CHECK = true
SHOULD_LINEMERGE = true
category = Custom
pulldown_type = true
TZ_ALIAS = UTC=JST
disabled = false

result:
Eventually, the time-stamp was 9 hours plus the time on log.

Am I something wrong about that option?

[woodcock]

No, your setting should be this:

TZ_ALIAS = 00:00=JST

It has to match exactly what is in the log.

[xpac · Accepted solution]

Hey,

If there's a timezone in the timestamp, it will override whatever is being set in TZ.
Therefore, you have two options:
- Manually configure the timestamp recognition, and do NOT include the timezone part in the TIME_FORMAT setting, so it should work with your example and %Y/%m/%d %H:%M:%S
- If this is syslog, you can have that log timestamp just being rewritten with a proper timestamp, and let Splunk just do it's thing. I've done it with syslog-ng before, you can read about it here: https://spice.areafunky.net/2017/07/08/bye-rsyslogd-here-comes-syslog-ng-fixing-timestamps-without-t...

Hope that helps - if it does I'd be happy if you would upvote/accept this answer, so others could profit from it. 🙂

[yutaka1005]

Thank you for answer.

It is very helpful.
I will try TIME_FORMAT settings excluding time zone info until syslog settings will be corrected.

[FrankVl]

If the log says it is in 00:00 TZ, why would you want to tell Splunk the log is in another timezone? Sounds like that would mess up the timestamping.

[yutaka1005]

Thank you for answer.

Yeah normally I don't have to do such a thing.
But there is logs have wrong timezone info, so I should have to do first aid until data source will be corrected.

[FrankVl]

Ah, ok, if the +00:00 in the log is really incorrect, then indeed try what xpac suggested.