I'll just reply to myself here: The issue was that the hostname for some reason doesn't resolve properly in the inputs.conf file. It is supposed to automatically insert the actual hostname, but it doesn't. I created the file "$SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/default/inputs.conf" (as it didn't exist yet) and entered the following lines (replace [HOSTNAME] with the name of your host system running Splunk):   [default] host = [HOSTNAME]    This should override the default configuration in "$SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local/inputs.conf". Afterwards, everything worked correctly ... View more

Was this ever solved? I am currently facing the same issue. I have already spent an afternoon trying to fix the permissions but nothing seems to work. ... View more