Getting Data In

Log4g (via Syslog) not working for multiline indexing?

jeffwarn
Explorer

I'm working on trying to get our application server's log4j working so that events will show up in searches for multiline events as a single event. There is also a problem where there are "..." breaks where the multiple lines should just continue on.

Here is an example output:

2013-07-25 14:31:49,813 [pool-4-thread-1] INFO  net.app.security.Filter (269) - Exiting ClusteredLogoutFilter#sessionCreated - Timestamp : 1374777109813
----------------------------
ID: 843352
Address: /path/to/application
Http-Method: GET
Content-Type: application/json
Headers: {content-type=[application/json], connection=[Keep-Alive], host=[myhost.com], accept-language=[en-US,en;q=0.8], x-forwarded-for=[1.1.1.1, 2.2.2.2], optr_cxt=[01000f0001eb4515a7-bdfc-42a0-8b4a-498d89c...
...05a4008cc0a81-7ab4-4e73-81b6-0e7358e69e6eb2edbc79-1b21-4e3a-bcf1-0e1ecfa297031       ;usraddr=0.0.0.0;usrname=;], x-forwarded-host=[myserver, mytest], user-agent=[Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/28.0.1500.72 Safari/537.36], x-dds-access-path=[wan, prv], cookie=[JSESSIONID=C4E29C6715F5DDD7475CD2554EC4050B.myserver.env; __utma=43946937.444067536.1371496959.1371496959.1371562971.2; __utmz=43946937.1371496959.1.1.utmcsr=(...
...direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); LKC=22; LKCD=ltr; MODULEBASE=viewport; PAGEBASE=viewport%2Flogin%2F; MODULENAME=component; STGT=TGT-64657-z0sbkEt6gIbNzSobYudbakapZxoer5To3wI0hRkIsvU6mYPJLb-cas; osv-user-name=somebody; osv-user-remember=true; osv-user-org-continent=NA; SSOcookie=6C3E0895C362D9D2F76272B5930EF414.service; AppName=myapp; AppEnv=P], x-ssl=[0, 0], referer=...
...[somehost?os-cid=40006], accept-encoding=[gzip,deflate,sdch], x-forwarded-server=[fwd.server, otherhost], Content-Type=[application/json], Accept=[application/json]}
--------------------------------------

I assume that this is a problem within my log4j/syslog configuration on the sending server that is causing this?

The other thing, which I'm not sure that it's an issue is, say I search on "1.1.1.1" , only the line that has this will show up in the search, not the full set of lines that I'm expecting. I would have click on this entry and then do a "Show Source" to see the full lines.

Any ideas would be great. I have this in my config:

props.conf


[log4j]
TRANSFORMS--strip-syslog = syslog-header-stripper-ts-host

[log4j]
BREAK_ONLY_BEFORE =
BREAK_ONLY_BEFORE_DATE = true
SHOULD_LINEMERGE = true
TIME_FORMAT = %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S,%3N
TIME_PREFIX = ^
MAX_TIMESTAMP_LOOKAHEAD = 25

Thanks!
Jeff

Tags (3)
0 Karma

jeffwarn
Explorer

It looks like the syslog timestamp/hostname was not being stripped out in some cases.

0 Karma
Got questions? Get answers!

Join the Splunk Community Slack to learn, troubleshoot, and make connections with fellow Splunk practitioners in real time!

Meet up IRL or virtually!

Join Splunk User Groups to connect and learn in-person by region or remotely by topic or industry.

Get Updates on the Splunk Community!

Monitoring AI Agents with Splunk Observability Cloud

Let’s say I’m running a travel planning AI app in production. A user asks for three concise hotel options in ...

[Puzzles] Solve, Learn, Repeat: Tiling

This puzzle (first published here) is based on finding groups of tessellated tiles (inspired by floor tiles I ...

SOK it to Me: Top 3 Benefits of Using Splunk Operator on Kubernetes that’ll Make ...

    Thursday, July 9, 2026  |  11:00AM–12:00PM PDT Duration: 1 hour (includes Q&A) Managing can feel like a ...