[Spacewalk-list] Entire Packages are downloading over the Client side over 800MB for OEL5 Latest Repo [SpaceWalk2.5]

[Tomas Lestach]

On 08/15/2016 08:21 AM, Malla Reddy Madupu wrote:
> Hi *Avi*
>
> I have re synchronized the OEL5 latest channel, now the packages are the
> 11973 only, however when i build/ sync the OEL5x client (Physical
> machine) it took more than 30 min to build the repodata.

Yes, for the first time it takes so long. Spacewalk generates and stores 
the repository metadata per package into the DB. Second run (e.g. after 
syncing an additional package into the channel) re-uses the generated 
information and so takes much faster.
According to my log:
  1st run: 1650 sec (~27.5min)
  2nd run:  175 sec (~ 2.9min)

>
> BTW, can I run the below command to clean the orphaned packages?
> "spacewalk-data-fsck -r -S -C -O"

Yes, you can. It just may do something else than you expect, as this cmd 
is unrelated to the repository metadata.

To answer Avi's question - we do not plan to generate repository 
metadata sqlite DB on the server side. At least not for the next 6 months.
Serving additional 1.2GB sqlite metadata (for OL5) that would download 
every client with any repository change does not look to be a good idea, 
especially if you have 10K or 20K registered systems.
To prevent the client from generating these files, I'd suggest to search 
for an appropriate yum option that disables this feature.


Regards,
--
Tomas Lestach
Red Hat Satellite Engineering