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Raw HTTP/S

Cribl Edge supports receiving raw HTTP data. The Raw HTTP Source listens on a specific port, captures every HTTP request to that port, and creates a corresponding event that it pushes to its configured Event Breakers.

Type: Push | TLS Support: YES | Event Breaker Support: YES

This Source supports gzip-compressed inbound data when the Content‑Encoding: gzip connection header is set.

Configuring Cribl Edge to Receive Raw HTTP Data
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From the top nav, click Manage, then select a Fleet to configure. Next, you have two options:

To configure via the graphical QuickConnect UI, click Routing > QuickConnect (Stream) or Collect (Edge). Next, click Add Source at left. From the resulting drawer’s tiles, select [Pull > ] Raw HTTP. Next, click either Add Destination or (if displayed) Select Existing. The resulting drawer will provide the options below.

Or, to configure via the Routing UI, click Data > Sources (Stream) or More > Sources (Edge). From the resulting page’s tiles or left nav, select [Pull > ] Raw HTTP. Next, click New Source to open a New Source modal that provides the options below.

General Settings
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Input ID: Enter a unique name to identify this Raw HTTP Source definition.

Address: Enter the address to bind on. Defaults to 0.0.0.0 (all addresses).

Port: Enter the port number to listen on.

Authentication Settings
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Auth tokens: Shared secrets to be provided by any client. Click Generate to create a new secret. If empty, permits open access.

Optional Settings
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Tags: Optionally, add tags that you can use for filtering and grouping in Cribl Edge. Use a tab or hard return between (arbitrary) tag names.

TLS Settings (Server Side)
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Enabled defaults to No. When toggled to Yes:

Certificate name: Name of the predefined certificate.

Private key path: Server path containing the private key (in PEM format) to use. Path can reference $ENV_VARS.

Passphrase: Passphrase to use to decrypt private key.

Certificate path: Server path containing certificates (in PEM format) to use. Path can reference $ENV_VARS.

CA certificate path: Server path containing CA certificates (in PEM format) to use. Path can reference $ENV_VARS.

Authenticate client (mutual auth): Require clients to present their certificates. Used to perform mutual authentication using SSL certs. Defaults to No. When toggled to Yes:

  • Validate client certs: Reject certificates that are not authorized by a CA in the CA certificate path, or by another trusted CA (e.g., the system’s CA). Defaults to No.

  • Common name: Regex matching subject common names in peer certificates allowed to connect. Defaults to .*. Matches on the substring after CN=. As needed, escape regex tokens to match literal characters. E.g., to match the subject CN=worker.cribl.local, you would enter: worker\.cribl\.local.

Minimum TLS version: Optionally, select the minimum TLS version to accept from connections.

Maximum TLS version: Optionally, select the maximum TLS version to accept from connections.

Persistent Queue Settings
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In this section, you can optionally specify persistent queue storage, using the following controls. This will buffer and preserve incoming events when a downstream Destination is down, or exhibiting backpressure.

On Cribl-managed Cribl.Cloud Workers (with an Enterprise plan), this tab exposes only the Enable Persistent Queue toggle. If enabled, PQ is automatically configured in Always On mode, with a maximum queue size of 1 GB disk space allocated per Worker Process.

Enable Persistent Queue: Defaults to No. When toggled to Yes:

Mode: Select a condition for engaging persistent queues.

  • Always On: This default option will always write events to the persistent queue, before forwarding them to Cribl Edge’s data processing engine.
  • Smart: This option will engage PQ only when the Source detects backpressure from Cribl Edge’s data processing engine.

Max buffer size: The maximum number of events to hold in memory before reporting backpressure to the Source. Defaults to 1000.

Commit frequency: The number of events to send downstream before committing that Stream has read them. Defaults to 42.

Max file size: The maximum data volume to store in each queue file before closing it and (optionally) applying the configured Compression. Enter a numeral with units of KB, MB, etc. If not specified, Cribl Edge applies the default 1 MB.

Max queue size: The maximum amount of disk space that the queue is allowed to consume, on each Worker Process. Once this limit is reached, Cribl Edge will stop queueing data, and will apply the Queue‑full behavior. Enter a numeral with units of KB, MB, etc. If not specified, the implicit 0 default will enable Cribl Edge to fill all available disk space on the volume.

Queue file path: The location for the persistent queue files. Defaults to $CRIBL_HOME/state/queues. To this field’s specified path, Cribl Edge will append /<worker-id>/inputs/<input-id>.

Compression: Optional codec to compress the persisted data after a file is closed. Defaults to None; Gzip is also available.

As of Cribl Edge 4.1, Source-side PQ’s default Mode changed from Smart to Always on. This option more reliably ensures events’ delivery, and the change does not affect existing Sources’ configurations. However:

  • If you create Stream Sources programmatically, and you want to enforce the previous Smart mode, you’ll need to update your existing code.
  • If you enable Always on, this can reduce data throughput. As a trade-off for data durability, you might need to either accept slower throughput, or provision more machines/faster disks.
  • You can optimize Workers’ startup connections and CPU load at Fleet Settings > Worker Processes.

Processing Settings
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Event Breakers
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Event Breaker rulesets: A list of event breaking rulesets that will be applied to the input data stream before the data is sent through the Routes. Defaults to System Default Rule.

Event Breaker buffer timeout: How long (in milliseconds) the Event Breaker will wait for new data to be sent to a specific channel, before flushing out the data stream, as-is, to the Routes. Minimum 10 ms, default 10000 (10 sec), maximum 43200000 (12 hours).

Fields
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In this section, you can add Fields to each event using Eval-like functionality.

  • Name: Field name.
  • Value: JavaScript expression to compute field’s value, enclosed in quotes or backticks. (Can evaluate to a constant.)

Pre-Processing
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In this section’s Pipeline drop-down list, you can select a single existing Pipeline to process data from this input before the data is sent through the Routes.

Advanced Settings
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Enable Proxy Protocol: Toggle to Yes if the connection is proxied by a device that supports Proxy Protocol v1 or v2. This setting affects how the Source handles the __srcIpPort field.

Allowed URI paths: List of URI paths accepted by this input. Supports wildcards, e.g., /api/v*/hook. Defaults to *, which allows all paths.

Allowed HTTP methods: List of HTTP methods accepted by this input. Supports wildcards, e.g., P*, GET. Defaults to *, which allows all methods.

Max active requests: Maximum number of active requests allowed for this Source, per Worker Process. Defaults to 256. Enter 0 for unlimited.

Environment: If you’re using GitOps, optionally use this field to specify a single Git branch on which to enable this configuration. If empty, the config will be enabled everywhere.

Socket timeout (seconds): How long Cribl Edge should wait before assuming that an inactive socket has timed out. The default 0 value means wait forever.

Request timeout (seconds): How long to wait for an incoming request to complete before aborting it. The default 0 value means wait indefinitely.

Keep-alive timeout (seconds): After the last response is sent, Cribl Edge will wait this long for additional data before closing the socket connection. Defaults to 5 seconds; minimum is 1 second; maximum is 600 seconds (10 minutes).

The longer the Keep‑alive timeout, the more Cribl Edge will reuse connections. The shorter the timeout, the closer Cribl Edge gets to creating a new connection for every request. When request frequency is high, you can use longer timeouts to reduce the number of connections created, which mitigates the associated cost.

Connected Destinations
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Select Send to Routes to enable conditional routing, filtering, and cloning of this Source’s data via the Routing table.

Select QuickConnect to send this Source’s data to one or more Destinations via independent, direct connections.

Internal Fields
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Cribl Edge uses a set of internal fields to assist in handling of data. These “meta” fields are not part of an event, but they are accessible, and functions can use them to make processing decisions.

Fields for this Source:

  • __channel
  • __headers – Automatically includes any headers sent with request.
  • __inputId
  • __srcIpPort – See details below.

Overriding __srcIpPort with Client IP/Port
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The __srcIpPort field’s value contains the IP address and (optionally) port of the HTTP client sending data to this Source.

When any proxies (including load balancers) lie between the HTTP client and the Source, the last proxy adds an X‑Forwarded‑For header whose value is the IP/port of the original client. With multiple proxies, this header’s value will be an array, whose first item is the original client IP/port.

If X‑Forwarded‑For is present, and Advanced Settings > Enable proxy protocol is set to No, the original client IP/port in this header will override the value of __srcIpPort.

If Enable proxy protocol is set to Yes, the X‑Forwarded‑For header’s contents will not override the __srcIpPort value. (Here, the upstream proxy can convey the client IP/port without using this header.)