Why is splunk-launch.conf not in system/local?
Because Splunk-launch.conf hold startup information, that is required to get the Splunk application started to the point it can read the other configuraiton files.
The settings for the SPLUNK_HOME and SPLUNK_DB variables are set in this file. How can it read the files in $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps if it doesnt know the value of SPLUNK_HOME?
Because Splunk-launch.conf hold startup information, that is required to get the Splunk application started to the point it can read the other configuraiton files.
The settings for the SPLUNK_HOME and SPLUNK_DB variables are set in this file. How can it read the files in $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps if it doesnt know the value of SPLUNK_HOME?
Note from splunk-launch.conf didn't help?
# Note: this conf file is different from most splunk conf files. There is
# only one in the whole system, located at
# $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/splunk-launch.conf; further, there are no stanzas,
# explicit or implicit. Finally, any splunk-launch.conf files in
# etc/apps/... or etc/users/... will be ignored.
yeah, but still curious as to why
i think that because of the nature of the configurations this file holds, you really dont want any conflict or overwrite due to hierarchy.
even at system/local, it can be overwritten or conflicted by writing same file in an indexer cluster (slave-apps directory) or search head cluster (moves to the default directory when pushing bundle)
any conflicts in this file will cause pain ...
nothing above is supported in any docs (that i could find) just a guess