Why does metadata show the wrong total event count after using the delete command?

[neelamssantosh]

Scenario1:
deleted the events from the indexer1 using the delete command, successfully executed but
1. Still few Host shows up with the event counts

Scenario 2:
Deleted the events from indexer2, Fatal: terminated unsuccessfully but
1. deleted the events manually from Host, but then in metadata it shows the event count
2. when I search for particular host events, it says 0events.

[martin_mueller]

Not updating metadata is documented behaviour for the delete command:

The delete operator does not update the metadata of the events, so any metadata searches will still include the events although they are not searchable.

http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/6.2.2/Indexer/RemovedatafromSplunk

[martin_mueller]

It's best not to rely on delete too much.

In your scenario it's possible that the delete cleared an entire bucket for removal, thereby cleaning its metadata which might have removed an entire host... that's just a wild guess though.

[neelamssantosh]

Thanks Martin,
Completely agree with you, But why for few hosts it shows the eventsCount and for few it shows with 0events