Why is the term ‘auto tune’ used in indexes.conf documentation for auto ‘maxDataSize’? This may be misleading.

[kgrigsby_splunk]

Concern:

The documentation here states:

‘maxDataSize = <positive integer>|auto|auto_high_volume 
* The maximum size in MB for a hot DB to reach before a roll to warm is 
triggered. 
* Specifying "auto" or "auto_high_volume" will cause Splunk to autotune this 
parameter (recommended).’

http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/6.5.0/admin/indexesconf

Why is the word auto tune used here? A few lines below:

* Defaults to "auto", which sets the size to 750MB. 
* "auto_high_volume" sets the size to 10GB on 64-bit, and 1GB on 32-bit 
systems. 

There doesn't seem to be anything "automatically tuned" about setting the size of the buckets based on the OS been 32bit or 64bit.

[kgrigsby_splunk · Accepted solution]

There is some historical context that explains the use of the word “auto” here as it was once used to convey a different setting on 64-bit and 32-bit systems. At some point, this got converged to 750MB for ‘auto,’ leaving ‘auto_high_volume’ with two different settings; one for 64-bit systems and the other for 32-bit systems.

It has been determined that it is a good idea to replace these literals ‘auto’ and ‘auto_high_volume’ to other, more preferred literals in the documentation; being careful to include a note that the changes in the documentation are the same as ‘auto’ and ‘auto_high_volume’, keeping the older literals around for backwards compatibility. It has also been determined that the use of the term ‘autotune’ is not necessary as the term could be construed as being fairly misleading.