Set up Linux for workload management

Before you can configure workload management in Splunk Enterprise, you must set up cgroups on your underlying Linux operating system. How you set up cgroups for workload management depends on whether your Linux system is running systemd. To determine if your system is running systemd, see Is Linux running systemd?.

Workload management supports Linux cgroups v1 only. If your Linux system has been upgraded to a version running cgroups v2, you must revert your system to cgroups v1 to use Workload Management in Splunk Enterprise. For additional guidance and resources, see Workload Management operation during the transition to cgroups v2.

Is Linux running systemd?

Use one of the following options to determine if your Linux distribution is running systemd.

Option 1: Check systemd version

Run the systemctl command to check for a systemd version number.

$ systemctl --version
systemd 219
+PAM +AUDIT +SELINUX +IMA +APPARMOR +SMACK +SYSVINIT +UTMP +LIBCRYPTSETUP +GCRYPT +GNUTLS +ACL +XZ -LZ4 +SECCOMP +BLKID +ELFUTILS +KMOD -IDN

Workload management supports systemd version 219 or later. See System requirements.

Option 2: Check for systemd process ID

Run the following command to check for a systemd process ID. On most Linux systems, if the output shows PID=1, then you are running systemd. For example:

$ pidof systemd 
1

On Debian-based systems, /sbin/init is symlinked to /lib/systemd/systemd. As a result, the pidof command returns a number other than 1. For example:

$ pidof systemd 
5447

To confirm that a Debian-based system is running systemd, run the following command:

$ ps -q 1 ax
  PID TTY      STAT   TIME COMMAND
    1 ?        Ss     0:13 /sbin/init

The output shows a value of /sbin/initunder the COMMAND column. Now run the following command to check if /sbin/init is symlinked to /lib/systemd/systemd:

$file /sbin/init
/sbin/init: symbolic link to /lib/systemd/systemd

The output shows that /sbin/init is symlinked to a file called /lib/systemd/systemd, confirming that your system is running systemd.

To configure cgroups on Linux systems running systemd, see Configure systemd distributions for workload management.

To configure cgroups on Linux systems not running systemd, see Configure non-systemd distributions for workload management.