Implementing Splunk 7, Third Edition - Third Edition

Common input attributes

These common bits of metadata are used in the parsing stage to pick the appropriate stanzas in props.conf:

• host: By default, host will be set to the hostname of the machine producing the event. This is usually the correct value, but it can be overridden when appropriate.
• source: This field is usually set to the path, file, or network port that an event came from, but this value can be hardcoded.
• sourcetype: This field is almost always set in inputs.conf and is the primary field to determine which set of parsing rules in props.conf to apply to these events.

It is very important to set sourcetype. In the absence of a value, Splunk will create automatic values based on the source, which can easily result in an explosion ...