parsing events...

[a212830]

Hi,

How would I parse a file that has two linebreaking formats? The first is when the line begins and ends with asterisks (*), and the other is when they start with a date. The asterisk appears to be multi-line, and the date appears to be single-line.

[vincesesto]

Hi a212830,

Try something like the following for your props.conf:

BREAK_ONLY_BEFORE=^\*\*\s+\w+|^\[
NO_BINARY_CHECK=1
SHOULD_LINEMERGE=true

The BREAK_ONLY_BEFORE is in two parts to have two separate event:
1. ^\*\*\s+\w+ - this is looking for a newline starting with 2 asterisk a space then a word
2. |^\[ - OR a square bracket at the start of a line.

Of course you can make this as complicated as you like depending on your events, but from what you have shown me the regex of ^\*\*\s+\w+|^\[ should work as an event break for your data.

Regards,

Vince

[vincesesto]

Hi a212830,

If you create you own source type and you use the BREAK_ONLY_BEFORE option to create a regex that will look for the two linebreaking formats:
http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/5.0.2/Admin/Propsconf

Without knowing much more information on what you are currently working on, you could set it to something like:
BREAK_ONLY_BEFORE = (^*|^date)

Hope this helps, if you would like to provide some examples, I would be happy to help set up the props.conf file with you.

Regards,

Vince

[a212830]

Thanks.

I have lines like this:

*********** blah blah blah start of this event with no date/time stamp ***
stuff
stuff
********* blah blah blah end of this event

and lines like this

[10/29/12 6:40:34:438 EDT] 000001ae SystemErr R [Fatal Error] :-1:-1: Premature end of file.