"Verbose" timezone

Elastic Stack Logstash
1

Hi all,

I'm trying to create a grok statement for an httpd "access" log with entries like the following:

127.0.0.1 - - 2017-04-20 02:15:42.369 Pacific Daylight Time 80 "HEAD /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" "-" 200 - "-" 1004 WPh8Pgrmjx8AACx4h8oAAABl

The problem I'm running into is that I don't know how to parse the very verbose "Pacific Daylight Time" (and presumably all the other possible timezone descriptions) and ensure that they are correctly stored by grok when doing a date-match such as this:

date {
  match => ["eventTimeStr", "YYYY-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS Z"]
}

At this point I don't know if changing the log format to use a numeric timezone is an option. But that might be outside of my control, so I'd prefer to come up with a solution that does not require changing the logs.

Thoughts?

Thanks much,
Greg

2

So it appears what I want to do is not possible...

https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/current/plugins-filters-date.html

z time zone names. Time zone names (z) cannot be parsed.

If I'm misunderstanding, please let me know. (Seems changing the logs may be the only option.)

Thanks,
Greg

3

Apart from changing the log format (which I think you should pursue on general principle since it's completely idiotic and not even convenient for humans) you can use a translate filter to transform the verbose timezone string names into UTC offsets. I'm guessing you have a finite set of timezone names appearing in your logs.

4

Thanks for the suggestion, Magnus. I'll definitely look into the translate filter. (And, yes, I share your thoughts about the 'idiotic' logging choice.)