Tuning Changelogs

Some packages have a long list of changelog entries. This data is downloaded by default, but it is not always useful information to keep. In order to limit the amount of changelog metadata which is downloaded and to save disk space, you can put a limit on how many entries to keep on disk.

Use mgrctl term before running steps inside the server container.

This configuration option is in the /etc/rhn/rhn.conf configuration file. The parameter defaults to 20. Changing this value to 0 will provide an unlimited number of entries.

java.max_changelog_entries = 20

If you set this parameter, it comes into effect only for new packages when they are synchronized.

After changing this parameter, restart services with mgradm restart.

You might like to delete and regenerate the cached data to remove older data.

Deleting and regenerating cached data can take a long time. Depending on the number of channels you have and the amount of data to be deleted, it can potentially take several hours. The task is run in the background by Taskomatic, so you can continue to use SUSE Manager while the operation completes, however you should expect some performance loss.

You can delete and request a regeneration of cached data from the command line:

spacewalk-sql -i

Then on the SQL database prompt, enter:

DELETE FROM rhnPackageRepodata;
INSERT INTO rhnRepoRegenQueue (id, CHANNEL_LABEL, REASON, FORCE)
(SELECT sequence_nextval('rhn_repo_regen_queue_id_seq'),
        C.label,
        'cached data regeneration',
        'Y'
        FROM rhnChannel C);
\q