ERROR: nextval: reached maximum value of sequence "logs_id_seq" in Red Hat Satellite 6

Environment

• Red Hat Satellite
  • 6.15
  • 6.16
  • 6.17

Issue

• The Ansible callback that is uploading data to Satellite is getting error 500.

• Some services using Satellite API fail with 500 errors, most of them starting with the following text:

      2025-09-25T15:49:24 [W|app|afca0a76] Action failed
  2025-09-25T15:49:24 [I|app|afca0a76] Backtrace for 'Action failed' error (ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid): PG::SequenceGeneratorLimitExceeded: ERROR:  nextval: reached maximum value of sequence "logs_id_seq" (2147483647)
  

Resolution

• This issue has been reported to the Red Hat Satellite Engineering team via This content is not included.SAT-38813 bug and is being actively investigated.

• To fix the issue manually on the affected Red Hat Satellite server, proceed with the following steps:

  1. Ensure that a backup or VM snapshot exists for the affected Red Hat Satellite server, before proceeding further.

  2. Clear any paused tasks that might be present.

     # foreman-rake foreman_tasks:cleanup TASK_SEARCH='label ~ *' STATES='paused' VERBOSE=true
     

  3. Check the max_value and last_value of logs_id_seq sequence in foreman database. They are expected to be the same at this point.

     # echo "select * from pg_sequences where sequencename='logs_id_seq';" | su - postgres -c "psql -x foreman"
     

  4. Fix the issue:

     # echo "ALTER SEQUENCE logs_id_seq AS bigint;" | su - postgres -c "psql foreman"
     

  5. Verify that max_value is now much higher than last_value for logs_id_seq sequence and its data_type is set as bigint

     # echo "select * from pg_sequences where sequencename='logs_id_seq';" | su - postgres -c "psql -x foreman"
     

  6. Restart the services.

     # satellite-maintain service restart
     # sleep 20 & hammer ping
     

• Reach out to Red Hat Technical Support in case of any further questions or concerns.

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

Root Cause

• As it can be observed in the Diagnostic Steps section,
  • The id column of public.logs table is of integer data type and depends on logs_id_seq.
  • The logs_id_seq itself also has the data type set to integer due to which the value of the max_value field is limited to 2147483647 and the last_value field has reached that specific limit.

Diagnostic Steps

• The following traceback recurs a lot in /var/log/foreman/production.log:

      2025-09-25T15:49:24 [W|app|afca0a76] Action failed
  2025-09-25T15:49:24 [I|app|afca0a76] Backtrace for 'Action failed' error (ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid): PG::SequenceGeneratorLimitExceeded: ERROR:  nextval: reached maximum value of sequence "logs_id_seq" (2147483647)
  

• Inspecting the sequence and table in concern, the following can be found in the foreman database.

      # echo "select * from pg_sequences where sequencename='logs_id_seq';" | su - postgres -c "psql -x foreman"
  -[ RECORD 1 ]-+------------
  schemaname    | public
  sequencename  | logs_id_seq
  sequenceowner | foreman
  data_type     | integer
  start_value   | 1
  min_value     | 1
  max_value     | 2147483647   ------------------> Not large enough value
  increment_by  | 1
  cycle         | f
  cache_size    | 1
  last_value    | 2147483647   ------------------> same as max_value which means it had reached its limit
  

  • It's not expected data_type for the id field or the sequence to be integer as the table can hold a lot of records and should have a large enough max_value (and that can be achieved from bigint data type).

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