What exactly does splunk.exe clean eventdata -f do?

[cboillot]

I get the it cleans out the eventdata, my question is where? Is this limited to the server the command was ran from? What does the '-f' do? what other parameter are there? Is this something that should be done regularly, or not at all? The only reference I can find is under Administrative CLI commands.

Could someone point me in the right direction?

[somesoni2 · Accepted solution]

The command splunk.exe clean eventdatawill clean data for single index (if -index parameter is provided) or all indexes from the current Splunk instance, which is typically an indexer. When run it gives a confirmation prompt before actually deleting the data from index(s). The -f suppresses the confirmation prompt. See this for more details.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/7.0.1/Indexer/RemovedatafromSplunk#How_to_use_the_clean...

[cboillot]

What happens if this is ran from a search head?

[somesoni2]

It'll try to delete locally indexed data for specified index (or all indexes depending on parameter used). Usually Search Heads don't have any data locally indexed (all data being forwarded to Indexers), nothing would be done.

[cboillot]

Thank you!

[niketn]

@cboillot, I think you need to correct the question and its description for us to assist you with the same.

[cboillot]

Thanks for the heads, up. Done. Seams it doesn't like less-than or greater-than signs in the title.