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The DUCS Archive System

For the Archivist

Implementation Details: ducs_arch delete

When more disk space is needed for new archive copies, the archivist must decide which versions to delete from disk. These should not necessarily be the oldest versions, but should rather be those versions for which no further use is anticipated. The archive disks contain sufficient space for four full versions plus many partial versions, so there should be no need to delete a version which will still be needed.

Particular care should be taken before deleting full versions, since restoring these to non-SLAC hosts requires shipping tapes (full versions are too large to ship over the network).

The implementation of ducs_arch delete is as follows:

• The database is queried to obtain the version comment. An error message is issued if the version has already been deleted or never existed.
• The version comment is read back to the user and confirmation is requested.
• The code is deleted at all hosts. For a full DUCS copy, this can take up to half an hour per host.
  Confirmation that the deletion completed successfully is obtained by scanning the remote shell login's output for the line: DUCS_ARCH STATUS: SUCCESS.
• The database is updated to reflect that the version is no longer on disk.