Getting Around Splunk’s dispatch_rest_to_indexers Roadblock

By David Allen, Sr. Splunk Consultant

Over the past few years, there’s been a significant push for Splunk customers to move from on-prem environments to Splunk’s SaaS (cloud) offering. Customers make this move for many compelling reasons: cost savings, scalability, flexibility, simplified maintenance, disaster recovery, security, and more. With infrastructure management offloaded to Splunk, teams can focus more on their core business. 

But—as with most things—there’s no free lunch. As the saying goes: “All that glitters is not gold.” 

While cloud-based Splunk brings many benefits, it also introduces some trade-offs. Notably: 

  • Security and privacy concerns 
  • Cost management challenges 
  • Vendor lock-in 
  • Limited administrative control 

This blog focuses on that last challenge—the limited control Splunk administrators have in a SaaS environment. 

The Problem: Losing Access to the Back-End 

Running Splunk in a SaaS environment means your admins lose direct access to the underlying infrastructure. This includes CLI access to the search heads and indexers. As a result, administrators can no longer use traditional tools like btool from the command line to inspect configuration files. 

While REST API calls can retrieve configuration settings, these are limited to search heads only. Splunk’s SaaS offering does not grant the dispatch_rest_to_indexers capability, meaning you can’t query configuration files on the indexers. That’s a big deal, especially for troubleshooting or validating app deployments. 

The Solution: Admin’s Little Helper for Splunk 

Say hello to the Admin’s Little Helper app—a powerful tool that restores visibility into back-end configurations without requiring CLI access. 

Download the app from Splunkbase 


The app introduces a new SPL command: btool. 

This is a distributed event-generating command that mimics the btool command from the CLI and runs across your search head and/or indexers. It lets you: 

  • View full configuration settings on conf files (e.g.,  props.conf, app.conf) 
  • Determine whether settings are from local or default folders 
  • Spot discrepancies between indexers and search heads 

 
Examples of How to Use the btool Command 

Check app versions in app.conf 

This search returns the app version for each instance and lets you compare versions across nodes. 
 

 
You can also narrow the search to a single app: 

 Extract the “BIG SIX” sourcetype settings from props.conf 

 
In this example we introduce the folder field which shows whether the props.conf path for each setting is from the local or default folder. Remember that in Splunk any settings in the local folder override any settings in the default folder. This helps identify where settings are being overridden (local vs. default). Knowing this is crucial when troubleshooting unexpected behavior. 
 
The above search will take some time to run if you have a large environment with hundreds of apps so it may be a good idea to save the results and reference the results for subsequent searches by using the outputlookup command as shown below.. 


Then you can use the inputlookup command to pull in the lookup data stored which will take very little time as shown below. 

This search looks for all apps in your environment which are using the default LINE_BREAKER setting on the search head. 

Final Thoughts 

If you’re running Splunk SaaS and hitting the wall with the missing dispatch_rest_to_indexers capability—don’t worry. The Admin’s Little Helper app gives you back the visibility you need, all through SPL. 

Whether you’re troubleshooting issues, verifying deployments, or building config-monitoring dashboards, this tool will empower your team and improve operational efficiency. 

Happy Splunking! 

Need help optimizing your Splunk Cloud environment? Explore TekStream’s Splunk Services to see how our experts help you regain visibility, improve performance, and make your Splunk investment go further.

About the Author

David Allen has over 35 years of experience in the information technology industry, including hardware design, software development, and entrepreneurship. He has extensive experience in various programming languages, development tools and Splunk. David exhibited his entrepreneurship skills when he founded his own AV company and ran it successfully for over 15 years using Splunk as its main data analytics software. As a Sr. Splunk Consultant he works to assist others with their Splunk issues and is constantly learning new technology and especially everything Splunk.

David holds both a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science Engineering from LeTourneau University in Longview, Texas as well as two United States Patents. David currently resides in Richardson Texas with his family.