Could not determine $SPLUNK_HOME, perhaps it should be set in environment.

[Dimitri_McKay]

I keep getting the message

Couldn't determine $SPLUNK_HOME, perhaps it should be set in environment

when I try to start Splunk. I made sure that my home environment has been set in /opt/splunk/etc/splunk-launch.conf, and the $SPLUNK_HOME was set correctly. How do I fix this?

[Yunagi]

I realize this question is from 2013. However, I had a very similar issue today. The error message was:

ERROR: Couldn't determine $SPLUNK_HOME or $SPLUNK_ETC; perhaps one should be set in environment

I installed Splunk as follows: First, I had extracted the tgz archive on my Linux system via sudo. Then I chowned the directory to the splunk user. Then, I ran "/opt/splunk/bin/splunk enable boot-start -user splunk" via sudo. Then, I tried to "splunk start" as the splunk user. However, I received the error message above.

I noticed the following permissions on the file /opt/splunk/etc/splunk-launch.conf:

-rw-r-----  1 root   root     830 Sep  7 10:29 splunk-launch.conf

So the splunk user had no permission to read this file. So I did the following:

sudo chmod a+r /opt/splunk/etc/splunk-launch.conf

[Dimitri_McKay · Accepted solution]

I had this very same challenge. Make sure you have rights to execute the splunk binary.
Test to make sure it's not a rights issue by doing a sudo to the splunk status.

sudo /opt/splunk/bin/splunk status

It will ask you for your own password (pre-supposing you are a valid user of sudo to begin with).
Once entered, Splunk should start. If it doesn't, chances are, it's a different problem.

[rfordiani3]

thanks, works for me.   

[optimisticBlue]

Is there a method to run Splunk without needing sudo?
Software shouldn't run under sudo, or only escalate when needed (e.g. to open privileged port)