Deleting console.log and cache

[AquilaNiger]

Hi there,

we've been using GoCD for years now and we are experiencing some performance issues recently (GoCD 19.9.0). When trying to open some console.log files via the GoCD UI it sometimes can take more than a minute for the UI to return the actual values.

We're currently assuming that this is because of the thousands of folders and files held in the artifacts directory location. Therefore some questions:

1) What is the different between <artifacts directory location>/cache/artifacts/pipelines and <artifacts directory location>/pipelines

2) Is it safe to delete from both directories? What would be the effect in the UI? Would the complete stage and job be removed from history or only the console.log?

Thanks for your support!

[Aravind SV]

Hello!

It should be safe to delete entries in the cache directory. They are used when fetching directories as artifacts (where it zips them, etc). It would be better to shut down the GoCD server and then delete them. You could move/rename the directory for a little while, if you're uncomfortable with that.

The pipeline run history is in the database, and not in the artifacts directory or in console.log. So, by you removing the console.log file, it means that you won't be able to access console logs, but the history (say, at a stage level) remains and you can reach. I suggest removing or renaming one of those files or directories first to understand what happens.

Performance usually doesn't depend on the number of artifacts, but probably on other aspects such as the size of the database, the number of pipeline runs, etc. Disk IO, memory, CPU, number of API and user requests, etc. can also have an effect. You could also look at the output of /go/api/support to see what is taking time, when you're trying to open the console log.

Cheers,

Aravind