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One of the components of Red Hat Nework (RHN) Satellite is a jabber server (jabberd) that manages the communication part of the 'push' feature to Satellite clients. This service keeps an internal database using a Berkeley DB in /var/lib/jabberd, but there is no in-place mechanism to purge this database. After some time this directory can grow significantly.

This article describes a method for cleaning up this database using Berkeley DB tools without affecting the service's internal data. The main purpose of this procedure is to reduce the amount of disk space used by the jabber server's database. It is important to note that the files present in /var/lib/jabberd are not log files, even if they have names starting with log; removing these files can affect the jabber server.

To perform a cleanup of jabberd's database on the Red Hat Nework (RHN) Satellite server:

1. Install Berkeley DB utilities:

   # up2date db4-utils

2. Stop the jabber server:

   # service jabberd stop

3. Invoke db_archive to remove the transaction log files that are no longer in use:

   # cd /var/lib/jabberd
   # db_archive -d

4. Start the jabber server:

   # service jabberd start