Why am I unable to start Splunk Light on Windows 7?

[asoul]

Just downloaded and installed Splunk-light. (Windows 7 Enterprise SP1)
I tried to start it, but I only get a browser window with "server not found" ( using Firefox 41.0.2, and IE 11.0.96)
URL is: "http://www.localhost.com:8000/"

Any thoughts?

[Richfez · Accepted solution]

Two issues:

1 - The system requirements do not mention Windows 7 except when 32 it (x86). Are you running a 32 bit or a 64 bit version of Windows 7? This could be the problem.

2 - There's no www. in front of and no .com at the end of the URL for localhost. It should be http://localhost:8000/. It is very possible your browser "added" that to be helpful when it couldn't find anything listening on port 8000 on your localhost, in which case see point 1. It is also possible your browser is being silly and too helpful, and it "fixed" your url which wasn't broken in the first place. The link I provided should work to click on, though.

An additional test if it's not working yet:

You should have a Windows service running that's called SplunkLight, or SplunkSomething. See if it's started or not started. If it isn't started, try to start it. If it won't start, check your event logs (system and application) for errors. Or check your splunk install folder's var/log/splunk/splunkd.log to see what that says. (Use a bit of sense with that, I may have the exact filename wrong due to the differences between splunk light and splunk enterprise/free.)

In the end, though, it's likely to come down to point 1.

[asoul]

Hi Rich

I'm new to Splunk so I only chose Splunk-Light because I thought it would be more "resource friendly" to my laptop ( Intel i5, 8GB, Win-7 (64) )
If that is not the case then I can try one of the more hearty versions like Splunk Enterprise- Free, as you suggested.
My laptop is a corporate laptop ( read: locked-down) so i would need to establish a VM on a USB or SD card. I am familiar with VMware, but what is a "*nix VM"?

-Bill

[Richfez]

I would ask your IT department, then, because in any of those cases you will likely need their permission to run anything on your laptop. The VM probably won't be a problem, but only if you have already have or have permission to install and run some local virtualization program like VMware Workstation ($$) or Oracle Virtualbox (free). The idea there would be to run the virtualization product, install some reasonable Linux distribution as a virtual machine, then run Splunk on that. Ubuntu, Redhat, Centos, and others could all be used. It is possible they may have something you can play around in, or if you show interest they may set something up - sometimes just asking is enough to get folks to get you what you need.

Alternatively - do you have an actual external hard drive you can use? Or a large enough USB stick to install something like Ubuntu on to? You could follow these here: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows but even in that case, I would check with your IT department or very carefully read their policy for the use of the work laptop. Dual booting is often frowned upon, sometimes severely.

That being said, for playing around, you really could get by with a not very powerful system. If your home PC is 2 cores or more with some reasonable amount of RAM (4+ GB) it'll probably be fine running Splunk Enterprise Free. I do that, it works fine for my modest needs.

And no, from what I can see, Splunk Light is not light at all, but actually has higher requirements than Splunk Enterprise. Or maybe more sane minimums - hard to tell because I haven't actually run Splunk Light on similar low end hardware to Splunk Enterprises, so can't really compare.

Lastly, I know you can get a free trial of Splunk Cloud too. That would run out after 45 days (30? Dunno), but maybe that's a better way to start playing around!

[asoul]

Rich

Thanks for your response on this problem.
I am running the x86-64 download for Windows, but now see that it has a minimum requirement of Win 8 . I am running Win 7 so that may be the problem as well.

Since I don't have a Win8 server I guess I am SOL!

-Bill

[Richfez]

For testing or playing with you can run Splunk on a *nix VM. On any reasonably beefy laptop you ought to be able to provision enough resources to do it will enough - but don't try to hammer it into the tiniest virtual machine you can make, try to give it at least some resources above the minimum in the docs.

Possibly run it as an Amazon Machine Image?

May I ask why specifically you want Splunk Light on a Windows 7 box? Do you need Splunk Light, or can you run Splunk Enterprise Free (which will run on a W7 laptop OK, as long as you aren't doing terrible things to it!)?