Splunk Python Upgrade

[kumar493]

Hi , Currently i am running splunk version 7.3.3.  Its running on RHEL 6.10 with Python 2.7 in OS level. I got a notice to upgrade the Python verison to 3.6. I saw and read somewhere that splunk has its own python library. So my question is if i upgrade the Python version of my OS to 3.6 , Will it break my splunk infrastructure which is running on 7.3.3. ??

[ChrisG]

You should upgrade to Splunk 8.0.x to handle the Python dependency. See Choose your Splunk Enterprise upgrade path for the Python 3 migration in the Installation Manual for more information.

[kumar493]

Thanks for your response , So you mean if i choose to upgrade python 3 on the OS and didnt not upgrade Splunk version to 8 , Its going to create issues for me and may fail some scripts within splunk right ?

And what splunk ships the python libraries those are also having a dependency on the OS level python ?

[gjanders · Accepted solution]

The OS python version and the Splunk python version are not directly related.

You can run older/newer python versions at OS level and a different version at Splunk level

Splunk 8.0.x ships with both python 2.x and 3.x , however this again does not change what you choose to run at OS level.

[kumar493]

Thank you for explanation.

[isoutamo]

Hi

as @gjanders said usually this don’t arise issues. But it’s good to know that there could be created some scripts which are using also OS level version of python. So if you found some weird errors after update that needs to check. Fortunately in most cases those scripts are using python3 not python2.

r. Ismo