How to increase threshold to avoid getting dispatch directory messages in splunk search head

[Prakash23]

Hi Team,

We are frequently seeing dispatch directory messages in the splunk GUI.

Show please help me how to handle it in a right way with some permanent solution.

Also, we have an idea that we can increase the threshold limit, so help me correctly how to increase the threshold limit so that we could stop seeing these messages in near future.

Regards,

[isoutamo]

Hi

The dispatch directory is used e.g. for store all needed information about your environment's searches (ad-hoc + saved searches, alerts etc). If you have lot of searches which has configured to save results for long time then you definitely need more space there. For quick help you can try to remove some old, unneeded files from it, but be carefully that you don't remove anything needed! 

In limits.conf (under search stanza) there are some parameter which you could try to tweak to avoid some of warnings, but changing those could lead you to out of disk situation 😞

Here are some old answers about this:

• https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/conf-splunklive/a-quick-tour-of-a-dispatch-directory.html
• https://community.splunk.com/t5/Getting-Data-In/Why-is-our-dispatch-directory-getting-full-with-stra...
• https://community.splunk.com/t5/Deployment-Architecture/Is-it-best-practice-to-clear-the-entire-disp...
• https://community.splunk.com/t5/Reporting/Too-many-search-jobs-found-in-the-dispatch-directory/m-p/6...
• https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.2.4/Admin/Limitsconf#.5Bsearch.5D

Shortly: needed space is dependent of your search activity and how long you want to keep those results in disk for reuse (e.g. from loadjob on dashboards or alert results).

r. Ismo