Add and edit roles with authorize.conf

You can add or modify roles by editing authorize.conf. Users are assigned to roles that determine their level of access and the tasks that they can perform. For more information about roles and capabilities, read About role-based user access.

Never edit or delete roles in $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/default/authorize.conf. This could break your admin capabilities. Instead edit the local version at $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local/, or your own custom application directory in $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps/.

You must reload authentication or restart Splunk Enterprise after making changes to authorize.conf. Otherwise, your new roles will not appear in the Role list. See Refresh the authentication scheme in this topic for instructions to refresh authentication without restarting the Splunk platform.

For more information, see

• authorize.conf
• About configuration files in the Admin Manual.

Note: Distributed search configurations have slightly different authorization needs. When you use search head clustering, you must make sure that the search heads and the search peers all use the same set of authorize.conf file(s). To make sure your authorization is properly set up for search pooling, see How authorization works in distributed searches.

Add roles

Here's the syntax for adding roles through $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local/authorize.conf:

[role_<roleName>]
<setting> = <value>
<setting> = <value>
...

The <roleName> in the stanza header is the name you want to give your role. For example: security, compliance, ninja.

Role names must use lowercase characters only. They cannot contain spaces, colons, semicolons, or forward slashes.

You can include these settings in the role stanza:

Search filter format

The srchFilter field can include any of the following search terms:

• source=
• host= and host tags
• index= and index names
• eventtype= and event type tags
• sourcetype=
• search fields
• wildcards
• use OR to use multiple terms, or AND to make searches more restrictive.

The search terms cannot include:

• saved searches
• time operators
• regular expressions
• any fields or modifiers Splunk Web can overwrite

Example of creating a role in authorize.conf

This example creates the role "ninja", which inherits capabilities from the default "user" role. ninja has almost the same capabilities as the default "power" role, except it cannot schedule searches. In addition:

• The search filter limits ninja to searching on host=foo.
• ninja is allowed to search all public indexes (those that do not start with underscore) and will search the indexes mail and main if no index is specified in the search.
• ninja is allowed to run 8 search jobs and 8 real-time search jobs concurrently. (These counts are independent.)
• ninja is allowed to occupy up to 500MB total space on disk for all its jobs.

[role_ninja]
rtsearch = enabled
importRoles = user
srchFilter = host=foo
srchIndexesAllowed = *
srchIndexesDefault = mail;main
srchJobsQuota   = 8
rtSrchJobsQuota = 8
srchDiskQuota   = 500

Refresh the authentication scheme

After you make changes to authorize.conf, you must refresh the authentication scheme to have the changes take effect. You can do this with either Splunk Web or the CLI. Refreshing the authentication scheme doesn't log users off of the system.

A restart of the Splunk platform reloads authentication, but it also logs users off of the system, and there is no requirement to restart the platform to refresh authentication.

Refresh the authentication scheme using Splunk Web

1. From the system bar, click Settings > Access controls > Authentication method.
2. Click Reload authentication configuration. This refreshes the authentication caches but does not boot current users from the system.

Refresh the authentication scheme using the CLI

1. On the Splunk platform instance where you want to reload authentication, open a shell prompt or PowerShell window.
2. Switch to the $SPLUNK_HOME/bin directory.
3. Use the CLI command ./splunk reload auth:

./splunk reload auth

The authentication scheme cache resets immediately.