# Initial setup instructions: how to take the timestamp from the log?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/initial-setup-instructions-how-to-take-the-timestamp-from-the-log/174554>\
**Category:** Logstash\
**Created:** [March 29, 2019, 3:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/initial-setup-instructions-how-to-take-the-timestamp-from-the-log/174554 "2019-03-29T15:03:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![stasher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@stasher](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/stasher)\
**Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 3:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/initial-setup-instructions-how-to-take-the-timestamp-from-the-log/174554/1 "2019-03-29T15:03:51Z")

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First time trying this out, and I have successfully got through the excellent Getting Started instructions. It is working.

Some feedback and a question:

It did seem a bit odd that all the datapoints had the same timestamp. This is seen in the Kibana screenshot too.

[https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/6.7/advanced-pipeline.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/6.7/advanced-pipeline.html)

As far as I can see, by default the timestamp for each event is the time it was received by logstash, and not the actual timestamp in the logfile.

Is there an example of a logstash configuration file showing how to get the events to use the timestamp from a standard logfile such as Apache?

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 3:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/initial-setup-instructions-how-to-take-the-timestamp-from-the-log/174554/2 "2019-04-26T15:03:54Z")

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