Promtail timestamp with error "hour out of range"

Been trying to parse the timestamp from logs using pipeline_stages with the following configs

  pipeline_stages:
  - match:
      selector: '{job="varlogs"}'
      stages:
      - regex: 
          expression: '.(?P<ts>\d{2}-\d{2}-\d{4}\s\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}). .(?P<level>\w*). *(?P<msg>hello)'
      - labels:
          level:
      - timestamp:
          source: ts
          format: "02-01-2006 15:04:05"
      - output:
          source: msg

The following single line log can be parsed properly,

[30-06-2021 04:18:21] [info] hello

But if the hour is more than 12, then the parsing is failed. For example, parsing the following log shows error “hour out of range”

[30-06-2021 14:18:21] [info] hello
cat test.log  | promtail --stdin -log.level=debug --dry-run --config.file=test.yaml
Clients configured:
----------------------
url: http://loki:3100/loki/api/v1/push
batchwait: 1s
batchsize: 1048576
follow_redirects: false
backoff_config:
  min_period: 500ms
  max_period: 5m0s
  max_retries: 10
timeout: 10s
tenant_id: ""

level=debug ts=2021-07-28T05:08:12.021519856Z caller=manager.go:58 msg="configured to read from stdin"
level=debug ts=2021-07-28T05:08:12.021784902Z caller=regex.go:132 component=pipeline component=stage type=regex msg="extracted data debug in regex stage" extracteddata="map[__path__:/log/*log job:varlogs level:info msg:hello timestamp:30-06-2021 14:18:21]"
level=debug ts=2021-07-28T05:08:12.021821869Z caller=timestamp.go:196 component=pipeline msg="failed to parse time" err="parsing time \"30-06-2021 14:18:21\": hour out of range" format="02-01-2006 03:04:05" value="30-06-2021 14:18:21"
2021-07-28T05:08:12.021716154+0000      {__path__="/log/*log", job="varlogs", level="info"}      hello

I tested the logic in a simple go program and it seems working fine.

	layout := "02-01-2006 15:04:05"
	str := "30-06-2021 14:18:21"
	t, err := time.Parse(layout, str)
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Println(err)
	}
	fmt.Println(t)
# output
# 2021-06-30 14:18:21 +0000 UTC

Not quite sure where the problem is?

Hey @Felix

In the error message, I’m seeing:

err=“parsing time "30-06-2021 14:18:21": hour out of range” format=“02-01-2006 03:04:05”

The format doesn’t match what you’ve specified above in your timestamp stage.

As weird as it may sound: can you please verify that the config file you’ve pasted above is the same one used when this error is produced?

This would also explain why lines where the hour is <12 are parsed correctly but >12 are not (as per the docs).

Hi @dannykopping

Thanks for your reply. I did mess up with my config. I tried again with the config as I posted above and it works fine.

Also realised that I need to specify a location for the timestamp (because there is no timezone in the log) otherwise I will get error “timestamp too new”.

All working fine now. Thanks.

1 Like

Happy to hear it!

Please mark the question as solved, so other folks with a similar error can see this question has been answered.

Happy Promtailing!

Marked solved. Thanks and Happy Promtailing.

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