How to clear activities and event log in Canonical Landscape?

Question

I am running Landscape On-Premises (version 16.06) on Ubuntu Server 16.04. The activities and the event tabs are filling up with the same entries every day. I am not able to delete any entries from the web interface. Via ssh I deleted relevant log files in the /var/log directory of the server but all activities and the event logs are still present when I login to the Landscape web interface.

I already got the information that the logs are supposed be an auditable log and so intentionally are meant to be not clearable. How can I nevertheless remove the activities and the event logs ? Where are the log files located and how can I manipulate them to clean up the server interface ?

Update : Results from the attempt to remove and reinstall postgresql and landscape-server

The solution to purge and reinstall postgresql generally worked, but after re-installing and re-registering account and computers, the computers were not able to ping the Landscape Server.

The solution to purge and reinstall landscape-server did not work - I got an error, which I was not able to solve, also I could not access Landscape Server at all anymore -> screenshots below.

I need to add that I did not run sudo apt autoremove after the removal - because this would have been a complete re-installation, which is too much effort for only clearing the event log.

Answer 1

They are located in the postgresql database, and there is no supported facility to clear them. You could attempt database manipulations, but I don't know what they are offhand.

Just in case it's fuzzy at all, I would not recommend trying to clear out the database rows, unless you are just playing around.

Answer 2

I had a period of lots of VM churn, which left me with a similar situation (lots of dangling activities).

It turns out it's quite easy to clear out old activities.

Log into your database:

durr@spacecase:~> sudo -u postgres psql
[sudo] password for durr:
psql (9.5.7)
Type "help" for help.

postgres=#

We can see the databases landscape creates at this point.

postgres=# \l
                                        List of databases
              Name               |  Owner   | Encoding  | Collate | Ctype |   Access privileges
---------------------------------+----------+-----------+---------+-------+-----------------------
 landscape-standalone-account-1  | postgres | SQL_ASCII | C       | C     |
 landscape-standalone-knowledge  | postgres | SQL_ASCII | C       | C     |
 landscape-standalone-main       | postgres | SQL_ASCII | C       | C     |
 landscape-standalone-package    | postgres | SQL_ASCII | C       | C     |
 landscape-standalone-resource-1 | postgres | SQL_ASCII | C       | C     |
 landscape-standalone-session    | postgres | SQL_ASCII | C       | C     |
 postgres                        | postgres | SQL_ASCII | C       | C     |
 template0                       | postgres | SQL_ASCII | C       | C     | =c/postgres          +
                                 |          |           |         |       | postgres=CTc/postgres
 template1                       | postgres | SQL_ASCII | C       | C     | =c/postgres          +
                                 |          |           |         |       | postgres=CTc/postgres
(9 rows)

I've poked around before, I have no idea why landscape apparently needs SIX different databases for one application. Anyways, in this case, we want the landscape-standalone-account-1 database:

postgres=# \c landscape-standalone-account-1
You are now connected to database "landscape-standalone-account-1" as user "postgres".

\d will list the tables in this database. There are a giant number of them. This will probably open an output pager, hit q to exit (or just don't bother with \d.

landscape-standalone-account-1=# \d

The activity table looks interesting. Let's have a look:

landscape-standalone-account-1=# \d activity

[Opens a output-pager again]

Whoa, it's HUGE. How many items are in it?

landscape-standalone-account-1=# SELECT count(*) FROM ACTIVITY;
 count
-------
   830
(1 row)

That doesn't match my activity count (38). Anyways, we can reinstall easily enough, let's just nuke everything.

landscape-standalone-account-1=# DELETE FROM activity;
DELETE 830
landscape-standalone-account-1=# \q
durr@spacecase:~>

And I now have no activities, and tailing the logs in /var/log/landscape and /var/log/landscape-server doesn't show any errors.

So yes, it's pretty easy to clean out stale activities yourself.

Answer 3

It is not normal to have so many resync activities. Something else is going on. Ideally, there should be none.

We have this old FAQ entry which still applies:

https://help.landscape.canonical.com/FAQ#I_have_hundreds_of_resynchronization_requests.2C_what_is_going_on.3F

And there is one more tip to add to that list: check if you have multiple landscape-client processes. A normal process tree looks like this:

2350 ?        S      1:00 /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/landscape-client --daemon --pid-file /var/run/landscape/landscape-client.pid
2352 ?        Sl     0:30  \_ /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/landscape-broker --ignore-sigint --quiet
2353 ?        Sl     0:36  \_ /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/landscape-monitor --ignore-sigint --quiet
2354 ?        S      0:16  \_ /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/landscape-manager --ignore-sigint --quiet

There might be one more child called package-reporter or package-changer, that's ok, but all under the parent landscape-client. If you have something different like a process outside of this group, that could be causing the resyncs. This would also cause "clones" to appear in your computers.

Answer 4

After many different attempts to clear the activities and event logs, this is what worked :

• clean installation of the Ubuntu server, including lamp / mail / openssh / postgresql
• clean installation of landscape-api / landscape-client / landscape-server-quickstart

• shutdown the Ubuntu server

• change /etc/landscape/client.conf to default on every attached Ubuntu workstation

• remove .pem file from /etc/landscape folder on every attached Ubuntu workstation

• shutdown every workstation

• start Ubuntu server, register Landscape account and afterwards register the server

• start all Ubuntu workstations, add the new .pem file, edit /etc/landscape/client.conf
• register every Ubuntu workstation and accept all pending computers in Landscape

Now all works as expected, though starting over from scratch somehow is a bit overkill.