Why Splunk search jobs stuck at "finalizing job" status for few days?

[sdubey_splunk]

Symptoms:

• It usually happen in the next couple of hours after we manually deleted the stuck search jobs

• It only happens to particular searches

• Once it happens, how long the affected search is stuck with the status of "finalizing"?

• The affected search jobs is stuck with the status of "finalizing" until we manually deleted them.

• Job status says 100% completed according to job inspection(when viewed via "Inspet Job")

[sdubey_splunk · Accepted solution]

Solution:
1. bump up max_chunk_queue_size in limits.conf in the search heads.
That will reduce the necessity for pausing search result collation queues, which makes hitting the issue less likely

limit.conf : Updated below parameters to fix the issue.

[search]
result_queue_max_size = 200000000
max_chunk_queue_size = 5000000
fetch_remote_search_log = false

remote_timeline_fetchall = false

Details about above paramters.

result_queue_max_size =
* The maximum size, in MB, that will be kept from peers for processing on
the search head before throttling the rate that data is accepted.
* The “results_queue_min_size” value takes precedence. The number of search
results chunks specified by “results_queue_min_size” will always be
retained in the queue even if the combined size in MB exceeds the
“result_queue_max_size” value.
* Default: 100

max_chunk_queue_size =
* The maximum size of the chunk queue.
* default: 10000000

Updating above parameters reduced the necessity for pausing search result collation queues, which makes hitting the issue less likely. And this fixed our issue.

[oren_s]

Are these changes still relevant as of 2025?

[gjanders]

Great question/answer, please accept your answer unless your waiting for alternative answers!