Unable to configure the Splunk boot-start

Applicability

Description

Splunk will create a Splunkd.service file under /etc/init.d/ to auto start the splunk service when the boot-start is enabled.

By default, there is no init.d directory in the RHEL 9.0. under /etc/ directory, and found that the "chkconfig" file was also missing under /sbin/ directory.

Investigation

While configuring boot start for splunkd services on RHEL 9, the user may be unable to configure it because init.d script is not being created. 

If a user tries to enable boot-start and does not use systemd to manage it, there may be errors.

/opt/splunk/bin/splunk enable boot-start -user <username>

The following errors may be seen when attempting to enable boot-start. It is not necessary to specify a user or anythiong else in the command to experience this error. Only one of the following errors has to be present:

Can't create RC file "/etc/init.d/splunk": No such file or directory
execve: No such file or directory while running command /sbin/chkconfig

Resolution

CentOS/RHEL 9 does not come with chkconfig installed by default because systemd is used for managing apps instead. There are two options for resolving this:

1. The best solution is to use systemd to enable boot-start. This is as easy as adding "-systemd-managed 1" to the end of the enable boot-start command. 

Please see Run Splunk as systemd service for more information.

2. If there is a reason systemd shouldn't be used, the alternative (legacy) option is to install chkconfig and then run the command again. Please follow the instructions below:


1. Install chkconfig using dnf or yum. 

dnf install chkconfig
yum install chkconfig

2. Enable Splunk boot-start

./splunk enable boot-start 

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