Thursday, March 22, 2018

Content Library Cleanup Tool explained

Just to expand on my previous post, here are some more of my findings on the Content Library Cleanup Tool.


  • Don't be afraid to delete content.  The content you are deleting with this tool is either invalid or orphaned, and is not the same as the content in your production environment.  It is perfectly safe to delete all content the tool finds in its scan - your DP will still contain the original content afterwards.
  • The tool may glitch every once in awhile.  I've seen a few times where the tool will keep showing "Analyzing local files... 99.92% complete" or close to that while appearing to still scan for content.  Pay attention to the prompts that come up between these same messages - you can press 'a' or 'y' on a separate line (yes, while it's still "scanning" at this same percentage repeatedly) and see if it accepts your input - if it does, it's in a buggy loop despite it still being able to process.  You can optionally check the free space of the drive the content is stored on to verify it's still being cleaned, or you can close the tool and re-run it again, your choice.
  • Be patient.  Occasionally you may notice the tool seems to 'lock up' at certain points.  I have yet to see the tool completely lock up without reason, so just be patient since whatever it's working on, chances are there's a lot of it to delete.  This is especially true of Endpoint Protection Definition Updates or any other content that gets refreshed consistently on the DP.
  • Troubleshooting. In case you ever receive the 'package is not fully installed' error, check the PackageID to validate if the content is being actively distributed to the DP.  If it isn't, the next step is to remove the content from the DP.  After doing so, run the tool again.  Then after the tool successfully runs, be sure to re-distribute the content you removed previously.  There are other errors that can happen with the tool indicating missing content, however, the tool can be re-ran to bypass these errors.
  • The tool may appear to delete 'too much'.  Depending on your environment/amount of content, the tool can easily free up hundreds of gigs of space on the content store's drive.  This is normal/expected behavior.

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