Getting Data In

Why are events ingested using the journald modular input truncated at 4088 bytes?

chris_barrett
SplunkTrust
SplunkTrust

I'm pulling in events from the journal of a number of Linux hosts using the journald modular input.

I'm seeing truncated events every so often and, when I look at the length of _raw, I see that it's always 4088 bytes.

The man page for journalctl (https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/journalctl.html) says that when events are outputted using JSON format, that "Fields larger than 4096 bytes are encoded as null values. (This may be turned off by passing --all, but be aware that this may allocate overly long JSON objects.)"

I'm presuming that that's what happening with the truncated events that I'm seeing.   Is anyone aware of a way around this?  I can't see any configuration setting associated with the journald modular input that would let me enable the '--all' flag.

FWIW, I'm running Splunk Enterprise 9.0.2

Labels (1)
Tags (2)
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!

[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 ...

Upgrade Prep for 10.4, Network Observability Deep Dives, and More from Splunk Lantern

Splunk Lantern is Splunk’s customer success center that provides practical guidance from Splunk experts on key ...