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WSUS Server Cleanup Wizard Appears to Hang
Had a situation where a customer had Exchange dismount the Information Store due to low disk space. Appears that WSUS 3.0 had consumed in excess of 100GB of space with content. My fault. Guess I had too many things products and update types selected.
Anyway, started the handy WSUS Server Cleanup Wizard to purge unused, unneeded, expired and superseded updates. The process of declining the various updates went very quickly. Then it started Deleted unused updates. That is pretty much where it stopped. It has been stuck there for almost an hour. It hasn't really hung. It is responsive...sort of. I can move the dialog box. WSUS still shows Running. There just doesn't seem to be anything actually HAPPENING.
SqlServer.exe process cranked up to about 25% CPU and stayed there. It's really busy doing something, but I don't see any improvement. None of the files have been deleted yet. We are still at low diskspace waiting for whatever is happening to finish happening.
I fired up the wizard on one of my test servers (WSUS 3.0 SP1). Behavior (or lack thereof) is pretty much identical. Is this normal? If it is, I think a better dialog that actually shows some sort of progress at doing SOMETHING would be helpful.
Anyway, started the handy WSUS Server Cleanup Wizard to purge unused, unneeded, expired and superseded updates. The process of declining the various updates went very quickly. Then it started Deleted unused updates. That is pretty much where it stopped. It has been stuck there for almost an hour. It hasn't really hung. It is responsive...sort of. I can move the dialog box. WSUS still shows Running. There just doesn't seem to be anything actually HAPPENING.
SqlServer.exe process cranked up to about 25% CPU and stayed there. It's really busy doing something, but I don't see any improvement. None of the files have been deleted yet. We are still at low diskspace waiting for whatever is happening to finish happening.
I fired up the wizard on one of my test servers (WSUS 3.0 SP1). Behavior (or lack thereof) is pretty much identical. Is this normal? If it is, I think a better dialog that actually shows some sort of progress at doing SOMETHING would be helpful.
try running performance monitor. at a run prompt type "perfmon". see if the average disk queue length is high. this indicates disk usage and that sometihng is actually happening
ASKER
It does spike a bit occasionally, but in general it is hovering around 10-15 or less.
Seems like a whole lot of nothing going on.
Seems like a whole lot of nothing going on.
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ASKER
Fascinating article. Thanks for the link. You will definitely earn at least a portion of the points awarded for this question.
When I went back to check on both of the cleanup processes, the progress bar moved slightly on each. That seems to be an indication that it is attempting to do something. I guess I need to be patient. Meanwhile I am watching normal usage continue to dig into the limited available disk space. Very frustrating.
When I went back to check on both of the cleanup processes, the progress bar moved slightly on each. That seems to be an indication that it is attempting to do something. I guess I need to be patient. Meanwhile I am watching normal usage continue to dig into the limited available disk space. Very frustrating.
ASKER
Love the text in the wizard...
"Server Cleanup is cleaning up the selected items. This may take a few minutes to complete."
That is quite the understatement...assuming this actually works. Progress bar now just over 50%...after nearly two hours.
"Server Cleanup is cleaning up the selected items. This may take a few minutes to complete."
That is quite the understatement...assuming this actually works. Progress bar now just over 50%...after nearly two hours.
ASKER
It finally finished...after about 4.5 hours. Not much change to the disk space. Reluctantly, I restarted the wizard and ran it again. This time it finished in less then 10 minutes having deleted nearly 75GB of content. Go figure.
Jimmypants, thanks so much for the informative link. I am a smarter person then I was at the start of the day. Therefore I am awarding you all the points.
Jimmypants, thanks so much for the informative link. I am a smarter person then I was at the start of the day. Therefore I am awarding you all the points.
you are welcome :) performance monitor is a lovely tool
Hi Guys,
I have the same issue here but with SBS2003R2 and WSUS3. The Cleanup wizard was started last night at about 1800 and is still running this morning (now 1135) it has started advanving through the deleting phase but very very slowly.
Is the AutoApprove process supposed to be active at this time, it isi showing bursts of 20% CPU time. SQLServer has extended burts of upto 90%.
This is on my small dev network with 5 users. We had to abort the same exercise on my customers server. Can anyone explain why this process takes so long and is this normal ???
Regards
Trevor
I have the same issue here but with SBS2003R2 and WSUS3. The Cleanup wizard was started last night at about 1800 and is still running this morning (now 1135) it has started advanving through the deleting phase but very very slowly.
Is the AutoApprove process supposed to be active at this time, it isi showing bursts of 20% CPU time. SQLServer has extended burts of upto 90%.
This is on my small dev network with 5 users. We had to abort the same exercise on my customers server. Can anyone explain why this process takes so long and is this normal ???
Regards
Trevor
yeah, I'm up to about 8 hours and counting... but the progress bar is moving.
a) I blame this on SBS's "All Products" mode and
b) Hope that WSUS still works once (if ever) the process is complete
a) I blame this on SBS's "All Products" mode and
b) Hope that WSUS still works once (if ever) the process is complete
DELL PowerEdge 840, 2.5Ghx Xeon, 4Gb RAM, 15K RAID 5, SBS R2 (fully patched), WSUS 3.0 (fully patched). No Event Log errors during the process (so far)
pps. 1 year 2 months 3 days old, WSUS has never been run on this server before
What I did was stop the GUI version of the WSUS cleanup wizard, press the stop button and if necessary use the task manager to drop the job. This didn't appear to cause issues on several machines that I did it on.
Then use the command prompt version. The command line I used is below, google the tool name.
c:\WsusCleanUpNew\WsusDebu
Didn't have any problems on any machines even after stopping the WSUS gui.
Hope that helps
Trev.
Then use the command prompt version. The command line I used is below, google the tool name.
c:\WsusCleanUpNew\WsusDebu
Didn't have any problems on any machines even after stopping the WSUS gui.
Hope that helps
Trev.
* WSUS cleanup has never been run on this server before. Lucky it's a long weekend on this ...
Hey TrevorWhite,
I've got 32.5 hours before the server *has* to be live, so I think I'm going to hang in there for a while longer...
I think I'll setup WsusDebugTool.exe as a Script for this and the other servers I look after in the future...
Is it a reliable tool?
I've got 32.5 hours before the server *has* to be live, so I think I'm going to hang in there for a while longer...
I think I'll setup WsusDebugTool.exe as a Script for this and the other servers I look after in the future...
Is it a reliable tool?
Hi Vantageit,
Do leave it too long . . . I believe that the GUI may even crash and never get there. I left mine for nearly 2 days before giving up just to see if it did ever get there. Worst case is that you corrupt your WSUS database and have to reinstall and take the hit of a long synchronisation and maybe a big download to catchup but at least you know you'll complete in time.
I haven't had the WsusDebugTool.exe crash or not complete as yet. I'm sure there are scenarios when it can't cope but hey no tool is perfect. Again worst case is you start over. Yeah bung it in a batch ready for the od tidy up you can get all of the options by running it with out parameters.
Good luck
Trev
Do leave it too long . . . I believe that the GUI may even crash and never get there. I left mine for nearly 2 days before giving up just to see if it did ever get there. Worst case is that you corrupt your WSUS database and have to reinstall and take the hit of a long synchronisation and maybe a big download to catchup but at least you know you'll complete in time.
I haven't had the WsusDebugTool.exe crash or not complete as yet. I'm sure there are scenarios when it can't cope but hey no tool is perfect. Again worst case is you start over. Yeah bung it in a batch ready for the od tidy up you can get all of the options by running it with out parameters.
Good luck
Trev
Well I left it over night and it was finished this morning. I reran it and it was done in 2-3 minutes.
WSUS seems to be working fine, did a reboot and sync'd WSUS, no errors.
The process has also cleaned up a "Update Services auto approval task" scheduled task problem I was having on this server.
WSUS seems to be working fine, did a reboot and sync'd WSUS, no errors.
The process has also cleaned up a "Update Services auto approval task" scheduled task problem I was having on this server.
Does anyone know how I can stop the Cleanup Wizard, not knowing it would take so long and use so much CPU I ran it on a production server and I have already clicked stop and it has been about 20 miinutes...I need to get this server back to normal CPU levels. Any ideas?
menreeq:
I have the same problem. Cannot stop the wizard after it have been running for 2 days. Nothing happens. What to do?
I have the same problem. Cannot stop the wizard after it have been running for 2 days. Nothing happens. What to do?