When/how does a topic "marked for deletion" get finally removed?

Question

I have issued the command to delete a topic:

./bin/kafka-topics.sh --zookeeper localhost:2181 --delete --topic  vip_ips_alerts 

It seemed to give a happy response:

[2014-05-31 20:58:10,112] INFO zookeeper state changed (SyncConnected) (org.I0Itec.zkclient.ZkClient) Topic "vip_ips_alerts" queued for deletion. 

But now 10 minutes later the topic still appears in the --list command:

./bin/kafka-topics.sh --zookeeper localhost:2181 --list vip_ips_alerts - marked for deletion 

So what does that mean? When will the topic be really deleted? How do I expedite this process?

Answer 1

tl;dr Set delete.topic.enable = true in config/server.properties of Kafka brokers and...be patient.

It happens with the latest development version of Kafka 0.8.3-SNAPSHOT:

➜  kafka_2.11-0.8.3-SNAPSHOT git:(trunk) ✗ ./bin/kafka-topics.sh --zookeeper localhost:2181 --create --topic my-topic --partitions 2 --replication-factor 1 Created topic "my-topic".  ➜  kafka_2.11-0.8.3-SNAPSHOT git:(trunk) ✗ ./bin/kafka-topics.sh --zookeeper localhost:2181 --describe --topic my-topic Topic:my-topic  PartitionCount:2    ReplicationFactor:1 Configs:     Topic: my-topic Partition: 0    Leader: 0   Replicas: 0 Isr: 0     Topic: my-topic Partition: 1    Leader: 0   Replicas: 0 Isr: 0  ➜  kafka_2.11-0.8.3-SNAPSHOT git:(trunk) ✗ ./bin/kafka-topics.sh --zookeeper localhost:2181 --delete --topic my-topic Topic my-topic is marked for deletion. Note: This will have no impact if delete.topic.enable is not set to true.  ➜  kafka_2.11-0.8.3-SNAPSHOT git:(trunk) ✗ ./bin/kafka-topics.sh --zookeeper localhost:2181 --list ➜  kafka_2.11-0.8.3-SNAPSHOT git:(trunk) ✗ 

The point is to have delete.topic.enable=true in config/server.properties that you use to start a Kafka broker.

➜  kafka_2.11-0.8.3-SNAPSHOT git:(trunk) ✗ grep delete.topic.enable config/server.properties delete.topic.enable=true 

You can also ensure the setting be true in a broker's log:

➜  kafka_2.11-0.8.3-SNAPSHOT git:(trunk) ✗ ./bin/kafka-server-start.sh config/server.properties [2015-07-24 22:33:26,184] INFO KafkaConfig values:         ...         delete.topic.enable = true 

Answer 2

In my case where i am using Kafka 8.2.2, I had to delete entries from the following manually -

1. Delete topic folder from Kafka broker machine.

2. Login to zookeeper and -

   hbase zkcli rmr /brokers/topics/{topic_name} rmr /admin/delete_topics/{topic_name}