Windows 2008 Text File comes in as garbage

[daniel333]

Hello,

Reading in a file via inputs.confg, I have a text file I am reading in. The FIRST instances of reading in the file worked file, but subsequent reads are giving me this. Any idea whats up?

B\x00E\x00G\x00I\x00N\x00 \x00s\x00s\x00l\x00_\x00T\x00a\x00r\x00g\x00e\x00t\x00=\x00w\x00w\x00w\x00.\x00s\x00t\x00u\x00b\x00h\x00u\x00b\x00.\x00c\x00o\x00m\x00 \x00s\x00s\x00l\x00_\x00I\x00s\x00s\x00u\x00e\x00r\x00=\x00V\x00e\x00r\x00i\x00S\x00i\x00g\x00n\x00 \x00C\x00l\x00a\x00s\x00s\x00 \x003\x00 \x00E\x00x\x00t\x00e\x00n\x00d\x00e\x00d\x00 \x00V\x00a\x00l\x00i\x00d\x00a\x00t\x00i\x00o\x00n\x00 \x00S\x00S\x00L\x00 \x00C\x00A\x00 \x00W\x00r\x00i\x00t\x00e\x00-\x00H\x00o\x00s\x00t\x00 \x00s\x00s\x00l\x00_\x00P\x00o\x00r\x00t\x00=\x004\x004\x003\x00 \x00s\x00s\x00l\x00_\x00V\x00a\x00l\x00i\x00d\x00T\x00o\x00=\x008\x00-\x001\x003\x00-\x002\x000\x001\x005\x00 \x001\x001\x00:\x005\x009\x00:\x005\x009\x00 \x00P\x00M\x00 \x00s\x00s\x00l\x00_\x00V\x00a\x00l\x00i\x00d\x00F\x00r\x00o\x00m\x00=\x008\x00-\x001\x002\x00-\x002\x000\x001\x003\x00 \x001\x002\x00:\x000\x000\x00:\x000\x000\x00 \x00A\x00M\x00 \x00E\x00N\x00D\x00
\x00

[gkanapathy]

This appears to just be a case of a misread character encoding. This file is saved in what Windows calls "Unicode" format, which is more specifically UTF-16LE. You can ensure that Splunk reads it that way by specifying in props.conf (in the same place where you keep the inputs.conf):

[mysourcetype]
CHARSET = utf-16le

substituting the sourcetype you are assigning in inputs.conf of course.

[lukejadamec]

I've seen this on files that are active. Limiting the search to rolled files works good, but the data is old.
Looking forward to an answer.