Splunk Search

Convert _time Timezone at Search Time

bcarr12
Path Finder

Some of the logs I am consuming have time stamps in GMT while my overall logging infrastructure is in EST. I am trying to do a comparison between the GMT timestamp in one log and the current time in EST. Is there any way to convert _time from EST to GMT using something like strftime at searchtime, so it can be more easily worked with? I understand there is a way to do this "overall" in Splunk, but I am more interested in doing a "one-off" timezone conversion if possible.

0 Karma

bmacias84
Champion

The best thing to do is set your time zone in your props file for each of your sources by sourcetype, host, or source. Then set your users time zone and Splunk will handle the rest, example below. The other option is to user strptime and strftime to do the math yourself.


#props.conf
[host::nyc*]
sourcetype = foo
SHOULD_LINEMERGE = True
TZ = US/Eastern

0 Karma

yannK
Splunk Employee
Splunk Employee

If the event has the wrong timestamp.timezone, it will never match your search time window. And you cannot change the TZ once indexed.
So use the previous method and reindex with a TZ.

0 Karma
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!

Laser Bananas and Edge Hubs: Exploring Operational Technology (OT) Data Through a ...

  OT is a different environment to traditional IT and can have interesting challenges when interfacing the ...

Event Series: Mastering AI Tokenomics and Splunk Agent Observability

Beyond the Black Box: Correlating AI Performance and Tokenomics with Splunk Agent Observability   As ...

span_metrics: The OpenTelemetry-Idiomatic Way to See Inside Your Services

You open a trace in Splunk Observability Cloud and everything looks fine. One root span, order-pipeline, with ...