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!

Data Management Digest – August 2026

MichelleCorpora_1-1788182384472.png Welcome to the August 2026 edition of Data Management Digest! August was a ...

Your Feedback. Our Roadmap. Visit the PX Feedback Booth at .conf26

You use Splunk every day, come and help shape what's next.  Save Your Seat: Product-Focused Sessions at ...

Agentic SOC Triage: Investigating Splunk ES Notables with MCP Server and a Local LLM

The Problem: Too Many Alerts, Too Little Context Security operations teams running Splunk Enterprise Security ...