Installation

Does Splunk support cgroups v2 for Workload Management?

AlexHaydock
Engager

I'm looking to enable Workload Management for Splunk and I'm just trying to understand whether this is fully supported on a deployment which is using cgroups v2.

Based on the documentation, the wording on the Configure Linux systemd for workload management page suggests that Splunk understands cgroups v1:

CPU: /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu/system.slice/<SPLUNK_SERVER_NAME>.service
Memory: /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/system.slice/<SPLUNK_SERVER_NAME>.service

But there is nothing (except the diagram) that suggests it can operate under cgroups v2 as well.

Does anyone know whether Splunk fully supports cgroups v2, or will our deployment need to be cgroups v1?

Edit: Some investigation suggests that Splunk fails to start with Workload Management enabled on a cgroups v2 host:

Jul 15 10:30:50 hostnamehere splunk[16311]: Couldn't open dir /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu/: No such file or directory
Jul 15 10:30:50 hostnamehere splunk[16311]: Error perform systemd preparation: No such file or directory
Labels (1)

nortonjco
Explorer

This is the same thing I needed to do for RHEL 9.

0 Karma

cameronjust
Path Finder

I just encountered this issue with Fedora 33

My fix was to edit /etc/systemd/system/Splunkd.service then change the ExecStartPost commands to 

 

 

# old cgroups v1 method installed by Splunk. Comment these out
# ExecStartPost=/bin/bash -c "chown -R splunk:splunk /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu/system.slice/%n"
# ExecStartPost=/bin/bash -c "chown -R splunk:splunk /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/system.slice/%n"

# new cgroups v2 method
ExecStartPost=/bin/bash -c "chown -R splunk:splunk /sys/fs/cgroup/system.slice/%n"

 


Don't forget to run "systemctl daemon-reload" after changing the file.

Edit: Not sure if there are other implications with cgroups v2 as I haven't tested workload management but at least Splunk starts with that fix.

 

 

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!

Automating Threat Operations and Threat Hunting with Recorded Future

    Automating Threat Operations and Threat Hunting with Recorded Future June 29, 2026 | Register   Is your ...

Keep the Learning Going with the New Best of .conf Hub

Hello Splunkers, With .conf26 getting closer, there’s already a lot of excitement building around this year’s ...

Splunk Community Badges!

  Hey everyone! Ready to earn some serious bragging rights in the community? Along with our existing badges ...