• Overview
  • Introduction and overview
    • Components
    • Appearance
    • REST API
    • Applications
    • Help
• Architecture
  • Components
    • Processes
    • Configuration files
• Splunk Web appearance
  • How Splunk Uses Skins
    • Skins css Files
    • Images/skins directory
  • Add or remove themes
    • Create a new skin
    • Example
  • Dashboard customization
    • Configuration
    • List modules
    • Add search modules
    • Add html modules
    • Link dashboard to user
    • Mask default dashboards
• REST API
  • Splunk's REST API
    • Using REST Methods
    • Splunk REST endpoint mappings
    • HTTP ports Splunk uses
    • Examples
  • Get started
    • Send a request
    • Get a response
  • Output formats via XML
    • Example Generic Response
    • Example Generic Response with Messaging
    • Generic Response with Messaging (via error codes)
    • Example Atom Feed Response
    • Example Atom Feed with Messaging
    • Example Atom Entry Response
  • SDKs
    • Python SDK
  • Create a custom endpoint
    • Make a custom application directory
    • Write a handler script
    • Configure restmap.conf
    • Restrict endpoint access
    • Add supporting configuration files
• Auth
  • Authentication Methods
    • HTTP header auth
    • HTTP digest
    • URL Parameters
  • Authentication Endpoint
    • Login
  • Authentication examples
    • Command Line
    • Python SDK
    • Other Python example
• Properties
  • Properties Endpoint
    • Properties
    • $FILE_NAME
    • $STANZA_NAME
    • $KEY_NAME
    • PropertiesNS
  • Configuration file access with Python
    • Configuration
    • Example
• Search
  • Search Overview
    • Handling Search Results
    • Result Formats
  • Search Endpoint
    • Jobs
    • Search ID
    • Events
    • Results
    • Timeline
    • Summary
    • Control
  • Search with the Python SDK
    • Create a search
    • Work with search results
    • Examples
  • Custom search scripts
    • Configuration files
    • Working with results
    • Authenticate
    • Example
• Saved
  • Saved Endpoint
    • Searches
    • $SAVED_SEARCH_NAME
• Streams
  • Streams Endpoint
    • Search
    • Livetail
• Applications
  • Developer applications overview
  • Applications Endpoint
    • Local
    • $APP_NAME
    • Remote Entries
    • Remote $APP_NAME
    • Category Path
    • Remote Login
• SplunkBase
  • SplunkBase API
    • Apps
    • Types
    • Category Path
    • Entries
    • App Name
• Legacy
  • Legacy methods
    • $LEGACY_METHOD_NAME

Components

Here are descriptions of the various components of Splunk's architecture. This page focuses on the most useful aspects of Splunk's architecture for developing against the Splunk platform.

Processes

A Splunk server runs two processes running on your host, splunkd and splunkweb:

• splunkd is a distributed C/C++ server that accesses, processes and indexes streaming IT data. It also handles search requests. splunkd processes and indexes your data by streaming it through a series of pipelines, each made up of a series of processors.
  • Pipelines are single threads inside the splunkd process, each configured with a single snippet of XML.
  • Processors are individual, reusable C or C++ functions that act on the stream of IT data passing through a pipeline. Pipelines can pass data to one another via queues. splunkd supports a command line interface for searching and viewing results.

• splunkweb is a Python-based application server providing the Splunk Web user interface. It allows users to search and navigate IT data stored by Splunk servers and to manage your Splunk deployment through a web interface.

splunkweb and splunkd can both communicate with your web browser via REST:

• splunkd also runs a webserver on port 8089 with SSL/HTTPS turned on by default.
• splunkweb runs a web server on port 8000 without SSL/HTTPS by default.

Configuration files

Most of Splunk's advance configurations are affected via configuration files.

Important files for developers include:

• authorize.conf: Use this file to create capabilities for scripts.
• restmap.conf: Use this file to create and configure new rest endpoints.
• server.conf: Use this file to configure the HTTP server and applications management settings.
• web.conf: Settings for the Splunk Web HTTP server.
• app.conf: Create dynamic user entry fields for your custom application.
• streams.conf: Configure settings for streams

A complete list of configuration files is located here.