Sync creates publication but no new repository version

[fao89]

Author: mgoddard (mgoddard)

Redmine Issue: 9651, https://pulp.plan.io/issues/9651

---

I have a nightly job that uses Ansible Squeezer modules to synchronise, publish and distribute some repositories. Every few days I hit an error like this:

Found multiple matches for publication ({'repository_version': '/pulp/api/v3/repositories/rpm/rpm/b9eb112b-28c3-46bc-a40e-594531b54925/versions/4/

I have verified that this is the case. There is one publication created after the last successful sync, and another created today for the same version.

 pulp rpm publication list --repository-version /pulp/api/v3/repositories/rpm/rpm/b9eb112b-28c3-46bc-a40e-594531b54925/versions/4/
[
  {
    "pulp_href": "/pulp/api/v3/publications/rpm/rpm/21680308-1fc4-4bea-a5fc-1e3c609533f1/",
    "pulp_created": "2021-12-21T02:31:44.243390Z",
    "repository_version": "/pulp/api/v3/repositories/rpm/rpm/b9eb112b-28c3-46bc-a40e-594531b54925/versions/4/",
    "repository": "/pulp/api/v3/repositories/rpm/rpm/b9eb112b-28c3-46bc-a40e-594531b54925/",
    "metadata_checksum_type": "unknown",
    "package_checksum_type": "unknown",
    "gpgcheck": 0,
    "repo_gpgcheck": 1,
    "sqlite_metadata": true
  },
  {
    "pulp_href": "/pulp/api/v3/publications/rpm/rpm/4a0c6a75-bb86-4b96-bb6c-6d0f08763847/",
    "pulp_created": "2021-12-15T02:31:07.260722Z",
    "repository_version": "/pulp/api/v3/repositories/rpm/rpm/b9eb112b-28c3-46bc-a40e-594531b54925/versions/4/",
    "repository": "/pulp/api/v3/repositories/rpm/rpm/b9eb112b-28c3-46bc-a40e-594531b54925/",
    "metadata_checksum_type": "unknown",
    "package_checksum_type": "unknown",
    "gpgcheck": 0,
    "repo_gpgcheck": 1,
    "sqlite_metadata": true
  }
]

I checked the sync task from today, and it completed successfully. However, it lists the new publication as a created resource, but no new repo version.

  {
    "pulp_href": "/pulp/api/v3/tasks/5e132510-89cb-4224-9966-d1f22d49a4e1/",
    "pulp_created": "2021-12-21T02:30:53.723988Z",
    "state": "completed",
    "name": "pulp_rpm.app.tasks.synchronizing.synchronize",
    "logging_cid": "0a4dc729907842aaa5ba9605e418cdd4",
    "started_at": "2021-12-21T02:30:53.801940Z",
    "finished_at": "2021-12-21T02:31:44.897653Z",
    "error": null,
    "worker": "/pulp/api/v3/workers/605f92b7-9b71-4039-a3de-0af017d86651/",
    "parent_task": null,
    "child_tasks": [],
    "task_group": null,
    "progress_reports": [
      {
        "message": "Downloading Metadata Files",
        "code": "sync.downloading.metadata",
        "state": "completed",
        "total": null,
        "done": 8,
        "suffix": null
      },
      {
        "message": "Downloading Artifacts",
        "code": "sync.downloading.artifacts",
        "state": "completed",
        "total": null,
        "done": 297,
        "suffix": null
      },
      {
        "message": "Associating Content",
        "code": "associating.content",
        "state": "completed",
        "total": null,
        "done": 0,
        "suffix": null
      },
      {
        "message": "Parsed Packages",
        "code": "sync.parsing.packages",
        "state": "completed",
        "total": null,
        "done": 299,
        "suffix": null
      },
      {
        "message": "Un-Associating Content",
        "code": "unassociating.content",
        "state": "completed",
        "total": null,
        "done": 0,
        "suffix": null
      }
    ],
    "created_resources": [
      "/pulp/api/v3/publications/rpm/rpm/21680308-1fc4-4bea-a5fc-1e3c609533f1/"
    ],
    "reserved_resources_record": [
      "/pulp/api/v3/repositories/rpm/rpm/b9eb112b-28c3-46bc-a40e-594531b54925/",
      "shared:/pulp/api/v3/remotes/rpm/rpm/7b6bc03e-787e-4266-ba33-425c4f9e540b/"
    ]
  },

Comparing with another sync task, I see a repository version listed in the created_resources instead.

Here is one of the affected repos:

{
  "pulp_href": "/pulp/api/v3/repositories/rpm/rpm/b9eb112b-28c3-46bc-a40e-594531b54925/",
  "pulp_created": "2021-11-19T13:21:20.971989Z",
  "versions_href": "/pulp/api/v3/repositories/rpm/rpm/b9eb112b-28c3-46bc-a40e-594531b54925/versions/",
  "pulp_labels": {},
  "latest_version_href": "/pulp/api/v3/repositories/rpm/rpm/b9eb112b-28c3-46bc-a40e-594531b54925/versions/4/",
  "name": "CentOS Stream 8 - NFV OpenvSwitch",
  "description": null,
  "retain_repo_versions": null,
  "remote": null,
  "autopublish": false,
  "metadata_signing_service": null,
  "retain_package_versions": 0,
  "metadata_checksum_type": null,
  "package_checksum_type": null,
  "gpgcheck": 0,
  "repo_gpgcheck": 0,
  "sqlite_metadata": false
}

And the corresponding remote:

  {
    "pulp_href": "/pulp/api/v3/remotes/rpm/rpm/7b6bc03e-787e-4266-ba33-425c4f9e540b/",
    "pulp_created": "2021-11-19T13:21:41.147452Z",
    "name": "CentOS Stream 8 - NFV OpenvSwitch-remote",
    "url": "http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=8-stream&arch=x86_64&repo=nfv-openvswitch-2",
    "ca_cert": null,
    "client_cert": null,
    "tls_validation": true,
    "proxy_url": null,
    "pulp_labels": {},
    "pulp_last_updated": "2021-11-19T13:21:41.147492Z",
    "download_concurrency": null,
    "max_retries": null,
    "policy": "immediate",
    "total_timeout": null,
    "connect_timeout": null,
    "sock_connect_timeout": null,
    "sock_read_timeout": null,
    "headers": null,
    "rate_limit": null,
    "sles_auth_token": null
  },

I'm using policy: immediate and sync_policy: mirror_complete when syncing.

Versions:

    {
      "component": "core",
      "version": "3.16.0"
    },
    {
      "component": "rpm",
      "version": "3.16.1"
    },
    {
      "component": "file",
      "version": "1.10.1"
    },
    {
      "component": "deb",
      "version": "2.16.0"
    },
    {
      "component": "container",
      "version": "2.9.0"
    },
    {
      "component": "certguard",
      "version": "1.5.1"
    }

[dralley]

@markgoddard This isn't necessarily a bug, it could just be that some minor detail about the metadata changed without actually changing the content of the repo. In mirror_complete mode, it'll download the new metadadata and create a publication with that, but there won't be a new repository version.

I can't immediately rule out that it's definitely not a bug but this is fairly likely to be the reason why. You'd have to compare the metadata before and after.

I'll keep it open though because I just had an idea for improving the heuristic. In the event that you change some detail on the remote from on_demand to immediate mode it'll trigger a full sync just like if the metadata changed - and it does need to in order to download the packages - but in doing so it'll probably also trigger the new publication, and it doesn't need to do that.

Probably not relevant to your problem but still something we could improve.

[markgoddard]

@dralley thanks for the explanation. I suppose that makes sense, assuming that no metadata is stored in the repository version.

So that leads us to a second issue, which is that squeezer is unable to uniquely identify publications when there is more than one for a given repository version. See https://github.com/pulp/squeezer/pull/85#pullrequestreview-803557737

cc @mdellweg

[markgoddard]

This also means my workaround of simply deleting the new publication is sub-optimal, and I should instead point existing distributions to the new publication before deleting the old one?

[dralley]

Marking as triage-needed to take another look

[ipanova]

https://discourse.pulpproject.org/t/design-question-why-do-publications-not-have-a-unique-name/300/5