[Spacewalk-list] metadata_expire and Spacewalk updates

[Brian Long]

I would like to know how folks are handing the default metadata_expire
of six hours when they push updates via Spacewalk.  My team has run
into issues for years where we will sync new updates to a channel,
wait for the channel repodata to be rebuilt in Spacewalk, then select
a bunch of hosts to update.  Many of the hosts will checkin
immediately, see zero updates and mark the task completed.  I believe
this is because they didn't refresh their metadata and they were
seeing cached metadata.

How are folks forcing the metadata update when pushing updates via
Spacewalk?  Do you set yum.conf metadata_expire really low across all
your clients?  Or do you somehow force a metadata update before
telling Spacewalk to push the latest updates?

Thank you for any suggestions.

/Brian/