Getting Data In

Pre-index filtering

leiniao
Explorer

Requirment

Drop events before they get sent to the splunk indexer.

Want to just send the lines with "Authentication_failed" on the file to the indexer.

Information

Using heavy forwarder and on 4.2.4

input.conf

c:\splunk\etc\system\local\iputs.conf

[monitor://c:\Programs Files\WebProxyLogs]
sourcetype=WebProxy

props.conf

c:\splunk\etc\system\local\props.conf

[source:://c:\Programs Files\WebProxyLogs] 
TRANSFORMS-set=setnull,setparsing

transforms.conf

c:\splunk\etc\system\local\transforms.conf

[setnull] 
REGEX =
DEST_KEY = queue
FORMAT = nullQueue

[setparsing] 
REGEX = \[Authentication_failed\]
DEST_KEY = queue
FORMAT = indexQueue

Result

Unable to index the logs

Problem
In need of guidance on how to solve this problem.

Tags (3)

twkan
Splunk Employee
Splunk Employee

This is how I got it to work:

transforms.conf

[setnull]
REGEX = .
DEST_KEY = queue
FORMAT = nullQueue

[setparsing]
REGEX = \[(authentication failed)\]
DEST_KEY = queue
FORMAT = indexQueue

props.conf

 [source:://c:\Programs Files\WebProxyLogs] 
TRANSFORMS-set = setnull,setparsing

lguinn2
Legend

Write a regular expression that matches anything EXCEPT the authentication failed string. This is a hard regex to write, because most tools (like grep) have a "not" switch so that you don't have to put the logic into the actual regex.

But here is an attempt

REGEX=^((?!\[Authentication_failed\]).)*$

Put this REGEX in your transforms.conf [setnull] instead of

REGEX=

In this case, props.conf could stay the same. I got this idea from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/406230/regular-expression-to-match-string-not-containing-a-word

lguinn2
Legend
[setnull] 
REGEX =

is sending everything to the null queue. Try this:

Leave transforms.conf as it is. Change props.conf to specify the order of execution of the transforms. props.conf:

[source:://c:\Programs Files\WebProxyLogs] 
TRANSFORMS-set1=setparsing
TRANSFORMS-set2=setnull

I hope that this will first send the chosen events to the index queue, and then everything else to the null queue.

0 Karma
Get Updates on the Splunk Community!

Accelerating Observability as Code with the Splunk AI Assistant

We’ve seen in previous posts what Observability as Code (OaC) is and how it’s now essential for managing ...

Integrating Splunk Search API and Quarto to Create Reproducible Investigation ...

 Splunk is More Than Just the Web Console For Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) practitioners, ...

Congratulations to the 2025-2026 SplunkTrust!

Hello, Splunk Community! We are beyond thrilled to announce our newest group of SplunkTrust members!  The ...