CEF Files on Syslog-NG with Universal Forwarder

[jswilmoth]

We use Websense in the Cloud, and their method for retrieving log files is to use a perl script which pulls down the logs in CEF format. I set up the script on a syslog server, it writes the CEF files are a folder. The syslog server runs the Universal Forwarder to send data to the indexers. I configured a monitor for that folder.

I can the universal forwarder monitoring the files, but they never show up in my searches. We have many other log sources on this syslog server, all are working fine, except they are all in .log format. These are .cef files.

Any help would be appreciated.

Websense Cloud Logging

[monitor:///opt/syslog/logs/websense_cloud/*.cef]
index = syslog
sourcetype = websense:cef
host_segment = 4
ignoreOlderThan = 5d

[FrankVl]

Let's start with some basic data feed troubleshooting:

• any messages in splunkd.log confirming the forwarder has started to monitor that folder?
• are you sure permissions on those files are correct for splunk to be able to read them?
• any errors in splunkd.log on that forwarder related to this feed?
• what does the forwarder's metrics.log say about this sourcetype?
• what do your indexer metrics.log say about this sourcetype?
• have your tried searching for 'all time', in case time stamp extraction isn't working perfectly?