Document the workflow for removing obsolete suites from archive

Such workflow is particular important when we archive is reaching 264 G, like now.

It seems to be agreed that removal could be performed ad-hoc and directly on the DB for now.

The procedure consists of:

 * Move the PUBLISHED records in a given suite (DR/DAR & POCKET) to SUPERSEDED, i.e., it's is possible to remove only warty and keep warty-security if required.

 * Run 'process-death-row' (already part of the cron.daily)

All not-used superseded packages will be marked as PENDINGREMOVAL and will be deleted in 24 hours.

This procedure is under test in dogfood instance.

A problem with the suggested workflow was identified: 'Stable' RELEASE pockets get skipped of domination.

It will require some code to force domination on 'Obsolete' RELEASE pockets, probably by not considering them 'Stable' anymore.

RF 4056

Pending removal on production.

We will encapsulate the publishing records updates in a simple script (scripts/ftpmaster-tools/remove-distrorelease.py).

It's not going to be sorted before 1.1.7. As agreed in a meeting with Kiko and Joey

Fixed in RF 5327. See obsolete-distroseries.py which makes packages OBSOLETE, which deathrow will process.

Is there anything special that's needed to be done for this besides waiting for the deployment? We're currently at 3% disk space free, so sooner than later would be good.

Tom Haddon wrote:
> Is there anything special that's needed to be done for this besides
> waiting for the deployment? We're currently at 3% disk space free, so
> sooner than later would be good.
>

There is a script to run that will make all the packages obsolete, where
possible, for the distroseries that we want to kill.

Since this is the first time it's been put into production, I will nurse
it through personally this time to make sure it doesn't blow anything up
and then I will show you the runes necessary to run it in the future.
It's not particularly difficult :)