Repository of type "file" can fill Satellite's /var/cache/pulp filesystem unless it's large enough to hold the entire repository in cache at the same time.

Solution Unverified - Updated

Environment

Red Hat Satellite 6

Issue

When syncing a repository of type file to the Red Hat Satellite, the entire contents of the repository are downloaded to /var/cache/pulp before being moved off to their final location. Potentially this can fill /var/cache/pulp/ and the sync task will be unable to complete.

Resolution

Workaround - Create a separate /var/cache/pulp/ filesystem with enough free space to hold the contents of the syncing repository.

This content is not included.Bugzilla #1755575 has been created to address this issue.

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

Root Cause

The Pulp component of Red Hat Satellite is responsible from syncing repositories from their source and putting them in their final location to be available for consumption.

When doing a sync, it will pull the desired content from the source and store it in the cache directory of a pulp worker. The location of a pulp worker's cache directory is /var/cache/pulp/reserved_resource_worker-<n>\@satellite.example.com where <n> is the number of workers configured with the PULP_CONCURRENCY setting in /etc/default/pulp_workers

Pulp uses different methods of synchronizing a repository depending on the type of repository set when creating a new repository under a Product. This only appears to affect repositories of type "File" as discussed in Chapter 14 of the Red Hat Satellite Content Management Guide

Diagnostic Steps

The more pulp workers configured and the more syncs done at the same time can increase the amount of data stored in the /var/cache/pulp filesystem at a given time.

Investigate the amount of space being used by the cache of a given pulp worker:

# du -sh /var/cache/pulp/reserved_resource_worker-*
0    /var/cache/pulp/reserved_resource_worker-0@satellite.example.com
28G    /var/cache/pulp/reserved_resource_worker-1@satellite.example.com

The repository sync task will clean up this cache as one of it's final steps.

# du -sh /var/cache/pulp/reserved_resource_worker-*
0    /var/cache/pulp/reserved_resource_worker-0@satellite.example.com
0    /var/cache/pulp/reserved_resource_worker-1@satellite.example.com

If the contents of the repository are larger than the available space for the pulp workers, the sync task cannot complete.

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