Removing Channel

This chapter describes how to manually remove SUSE provided channels from SUSE Multi-Linux Manager and clean up end-of-life products, to reclaim space or for other purposes.

1. Prepare to Remove a Channel

Before removing a channel, you must identify the label for the channel to be removed. It can be done with Web UI or on the command line.

Be careful not to remove channels that systems are currently subscribed to, or that you are planning on subscribing a system to.
If there are systems that are currently subscribed to a channel that you want to delete, do not remove the channel until those systems are upgraded or unsubscribed.

1.1. Identify Channel Labels

Procedure: Identifying Channel Labels Using Web UI

In the SUSE Multi-Linux Manager Web UI, navigate to Software Channel List All.
This page displays the Channel Name. If you select the link for a channel name, you will see the field for Channel Label.
Identify the channel, and child channels, to be removed.

Procedure: Identifying Channel Labels Using the Command Line

You can get a list of channels by running the following command on the SUSE Multi-Linux Manager container host:
```
mgrctl exec -ti -- spacewalk-remove-channel -l
```

1.2. Verify Channel System Subscriptions

Procedure: Verifying Channel System Subscriptions Using Web UI

In the SUSE Multi-Linux Manager Web UI, navigate to Software Channel List All.
Locate Systems column on the right.
Check the Systems column for the channel, or any child channels, that you want to remove.

Procedure: Verifying Channel System Subscriptions Using the Command Line

Run the following command on the SUSE Multi-Linux Manager container host:

mgrctl exec -ti -- 'spacecmd -- softwarechannel_listsystems <Channel Label>'

A channel, with its metadata, can be removed with command line tools only. The spacewalk-remove-channel command automatically removes the software packages, if they are not referenced anymore by other channels. Thus it removes the metadata from the database and the files from the storage medium.

2.1. Remove a Child Channel

Procedure: Removing a Child Channel Using the Command Line

To remove an individual channel run the following command on the SUSE Multi-Linux Manager container host:
```
mgrctl exec -ti -- spacewalk-remove-channel -c channel-label
```
To remove multiple channels at the same time, use -c flag for each channel, followed by the channel-label. For example:
```
mgrctl exec -ti -- spacewalk-remove-channel -c channel-label1 -c channel-label2
```

2.2. Remove a Parent and All Its Child Channels

Procedure: Removing a Parent and All Its Child Channels

To remove a parent channel with all of the child channels run spacewalk-remove-channel with the -a option and replace parent-channel-label with a channel label such as sles12-sp5-pool-x86_64:
```
mgrctl exec -ti -- spacewalk-remove-channel -a parent-channel-label
```