Forcefully republishing pulp repository makes no real effect

Environment

• Red Hat Satellite 6.2
  • pulp-rpm-plugins version 2.8.3.5-1 till 2.8.7.18-1

Issue

• content of some pulp published repository is broken (wrong metadata, broken symlinks for immediate sync repo download policy or so)
• forcefully (re)publishing the repository is expected to fix that problem
• but the re-publish does not improve anything

Resolution

Ideally, upgrade to Satellite 6.3 or newer that has the underlying flaw fixed.

As a temporary workaround, only for pulp-rpm-plugins versions 2.8.7.12-1 or newer, comment out one very redundant line in /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pulp_rpm/plugins/distributors/yum/publish.py: around line 280:

        last_published = publish_conduit.last_publish()
        last_deleted = repo.last_unit_removed
        force_full = config.get('force_full', False)
        date_filter = None
#        force_full = False  # comment out this line by adding # at the beginning of the line

Then apply the change (recommended when no repo is being synced or published):

for i in pulp_resource_manager pulp_workers pulp_celerybeat; do service $i restart; done

For more KB articles/solutions related to Red Hat Satellite 6.x Pulp 2.0 Issues, please refer to the Consolidated Troubleshooting Article for Red Hat Satellite 6.x Pulp 2.0-related Issues

Root Cause

The force_full overridden parameter was ignored, due to a bug in pulp source code.

Diagnostic Steps

• force-fully publishing a repository e.g. like:

curl -i -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST -d "{\"id\":\"$repo\",\"override_config\":{\"force_full\":true}}" -u admin:$pulpAdminPassword https://$(hostname -f)/pulp/api/v2/repositories/$repo/actions/publish/

• new directory under /var/lib/pulp/published/yum/master/yum_distributor/${repo} is created, but content is unchanged

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