splunk starting as root user how to change this one?

[kiran331]

Hi

Slunk starting as root user, I used chown -R splunk;splunk /opt/splunk/ and its caousing errors when I try to restart splunk using splunk user. How to resolve this?

Pid file "/opt/splunk/var/run/splunk/splunkd.pid" unreadable.: Permission denied
Pid file "/opt/splunk/var/run/splunk/splunkd.pid" unreadable.: Permission denied
Pid file "/opt/splunk/var/run/splunk/splunkd.pid" unreadable.: Permission denied
splunkd.pid file is unreadable. [FAILED]
Pid file "/opt/splunk/var/run/splunk/splunkd.pid" unreadable.: Permission denied
Pid file "/opt/splunk/var/run/splunk/splunkd.pid" unreadable.: Permission denied

Splunk> Australian for grep.

Checking prerequisites...
Checking http port [8000]: already bound
ERROR: The http port [8000] is already bound. Splunk needs to use this port.
Would you like to change ports? [y/n]:

[beatus · Accepted solution]

kiran331,
You'll want convert to running as the Splunk user in a specific order:
1. Stop Splunk
2. chown -R splunk: /opt/splunk
3. splunk enable boot-start -user splunk
4. chown root:splunk /opt/splunk/etc/splunk-launch.conf (We want to ensure the Splunk user cannot tell itself to run as root, see: https://github.com/MattUebel/splunk_UF_hardening)

The issue you have is Splunk was potentially writing out files after your chown as root still and the pidfile not readable by Splunk.

[stekosan]

neat answer, thank you