i finally fixed this, had to check to make sure the sample folder was in the correct parent folder "destinations". i then went and copied all the sample files over to the  splunk/etc/apps/destinations/samples folder (pulled from splunkbase website) then copied the eventgen.conf file over to the correct "local" folder in "Destinations folder"  and restarted splunk, pulled up index="main" and it populated data. Hope this helps. took me a while to get this right.     ... View more