Satellite 5.6 - spacecmd -- fix for: ERROR: redstone.xmlrpc.XmlRpcFault: No such system...

Today I was cleaning up (deleting) a few systems from a kickstart that had to be repeated. There were multiple profile instances of a specific workstation an admin was working on.

After this, I went to run a script via my spacecmd command-line interface to a system group in the satellite server, and the spacecmd script bailed and I received an error something along these lines...

(fictitious hostname below)

[notroot@mysystem ~]$ spacecmd -u username -s satelliteserver
<authenticate>
spacecmd {SSM:0}>  system_runscript -f  /path/to/my/script.pl  group:systemgroupname
<output truncated>
ERROR: redstone.xmlrpc.XmlRpcFault: No such system devws404.domainname.xyz - sid = 10000012452, 10000012453, 10000012454,

The error recommended using (within spacecmd)

system_delete <badSID-goes-here>
# or
system_rename <oldname> <newname>

I tried "system_delete" but that failed. I had previously deleted (via webUI of the satellite) the offending duplicate system profiles that did not match to an existing server, and the web UI of the satellite server showed it was gone.

I found in this spacewalk discussion from May 2013 something that helped:

• Either:
  1) wait 3600 seconds (an hour), and the cache will clear
  2) clear_caches command (within spacecmd)

Now the problem is fixed; love the 'clear_caches' command in this case.

Hope this helps someone else using spacecmd.

Of course with Satellite 6.x, the "spacecmd" command will be replaced by "hammer" (according to the 2014 Red Hat Summit Satellite sessions).