Some Splunk customers have encountered the following error message when performing searches:
The search job with sid=<value> failed to launch successfully after the timeout interval elapsed.
If search jobs time out frequently before successfully launching, check whether the server running Splunk software is overloaded. Alternatively, adjust the 'search_launch_timeout_seconds' setting in the limits.conf file.
This error message typically appears when resources, such as network conditions or processors, are at capacity. If you get this error message, contact your administrator or Splunk Support. Alternatively, change the default for the 'search_launch_timeout_seconds' setting in the limits.conf file to a value greater than 180 seconds. Changing this value should give the search process enough time to complete instead of terminating without producing results. However, even after changing the 'search_launch_timeout_seconds' setting, there might be some unique use cases where search still fails. If this happens, contact Splunk Support.