Cray System Management Documentation > Cray System Management (CSM) Administration Guide > image management > Delete or Recover Deleted IMS Content

Delete or Recover Deleted IMS Content

The Image Management System (IMS) manages user-supplied SSH public keys, customizable image recipes, images, and IMS jobs that are used to build or customize images. In previous versions of IMS, deleting an IMS public key, recipe, or image resulted in that item being permanently deleted. Additionally, IMS recipes and images store linked artifacts in the Simple Storage Service (S3) datastore. These artifacts are referenced by the IMS recipe and image records. The default option when deleting an IMS recipe and image record was to also delete these linked S3 artifacts.

cray ims recipes list --format toml

Excerpt of example output:

[[results]]
id = "76ef564d-47d5-415a-bcef-d6022a416c3c"
name = "cray-sles15-barebones"
created = "2020-02-05T19:24:22.621448+00:00"

[results.link]
path = "s3://ims/recipes/76ef564d-47d5-415a-bcef-d6022a416c3c/cray-sles15-barebones.tgz"
etag = "28f3d78c8cceca2083d7d3090d96bbb7"
type = "s3"

cray ims images list --format toml

Excerpt of example output:

[[results]]
created = "2018-12-04T17:25:52.482514+00:00"
id = "4e78488d-4d92-4675-9d83-97adfc17cb19"
name = "sles_15_image.squashfs"

[results.link]
type = "s3"
path = "/4e78488d-4d92-4675-9d83-97adfc17cb19/sles_15_image.squashfs"
etag = ""

Deleting an IMS image can create a situation where boot artifacts referenced by a Boot Orchestration Service (BOS) session template no longer exist, making that template unable to boot. Previously, to recover from this situation, an administrator would have had to rebuild the boot image using IMS and/or reinstall the prebuilt image from the installer, reapply any Cray and site customizations, and recreate a new BOS template for the IMS image.

New functionality has been added to IMS to enable administrators to soft delete, recover (undelete), or hard delete public keys, recipes, and images. The added functionality provides a way to recover IMS items that were mistakenly deleted. There is no undelete operation for IMS jobs.

Soft deleting an IMS record effectively removes the record being deleted from the default collection, and moves it to a new deleted collection. Recovering a deleted IMS record (undelete operation) moves the IMS record from the deleted collection back to the collection of available items. Hard deleting an IMS record permanently deletes it from the deleted collection.

Prerequisites

The Cray command line interface (CLI) tool is initialized and configured on the system. See Configure the Cray CLI.
IMS and Nexus are running.

Delete an IMS artifact

Use the cray CLI utility to delete either soft delete or hard delete an IMS public key, recipe, or image.

Soft deleting an IMS public key, recipe, or image removes the records from the collection of available items. Hard deleting permanently removes the item from the deleted collection. Additionally, any linked artifacts are also permanently removed.

Deleting an IMS public key, recipe, or image record performs the following actions:

The IMS records being deleted are moved from the collection of available items to a new deleted collection. Any newly created records within the deleted collection will have the same IMS ID values as before being moved there.
Any Simple Storage Service (S3) artifacts that are associated with the record or records being deleted are renamed within their S3 buckets so as to make them unavailable under their original key name.

Delete procedure

(ncn-mw#) Soft delete the desired IMS artifact.

The following substeps assume that an image is being deleted. The same process can be followed if deleting a public key or recipe.
1. List the existing images in IMS.
```
cray ims images list --format toml
```
  Excerpt of example output (note the value in the id field):
```
[[results]]
created = "2018-12-04T17:25:52.482514+00:00"
id = "4e78488d-4d92-4675-9d83-97adfc17cb19"
name = "sles_15_image.squashfs"

[results.link]
type = "s3"
path = "/4e78488d-4d92-4675-9d83-97adfc17cb19/sles_15_image.squashfs"
etag = ""
```
2. Delete the image.
```
cray ims images delete IMS_IMAGE_ID
```
3. Verify the image was successfully deleted.
```
cray ims images list
```
4. View the recently deleted item in the deleted images list.
```
cray ims deleted images list --format toml
```
  Excerpt of example output:
```
[[results]]
created = "2018-12-04T17:25:52.482514+00:00"
deleted = "2020-11-03T09:57:31.746521+00:00"
id = "4e78488d-4d92-4675-9d83-97adfc17cb19"
name = "sles_15_image.squashfs"

[results.link]
type = "s3"
path = "/deleted/4e78488d-4d92-4675-9d83-97adfc17cb19/sles_15_image.squashfs"
etag = ""
```
  - The created field shows the date that the record was originally created.
  - The deleted field shows the date that the record was deleted.
  - The link.path field shows the updated path to the artifact in S3.
  If the administrator desires the public key, recipe, or image to be permanently deleted, then proceed to the next step. If the deleted image might need to be recovered in the future, no more work is needed.

(ncn-mw#) Hard delete the desired IMS artifact.

Do not proceed with this step if the IMS artifact might be needed in the future. The following substeps assume that an image is being deleted. The same process can be followed if deleting a public key or recipe.

List the deleted images.

cray ims deleted images list --format toml

Excerpt of example output (note the value in the id field):

[[results]]
created = "2018-12-04T17:25:52.482514+00:00"
deleted = "2020-11-03T09:57:31.746521+00:00"
id = "4e78488d-4d92-4675-9d83-97adfc17cb19"
name = "sles_15_image.squashfs"

[results.link]
type = "s3"
path = "/deleted/4e78488d-4d92-4675-9d83-97adfc17cb19/sles_15_image.squashfs"
etag = ""

Permanently delete the desired image from the deleted images list.
```
cray ims deleted images delete IMS_IMAGE_ID
```

Recover deleted IMS artifacts

Use the IMS undelete command to update the records within the deleted collection for an IMS public key, recipe, or image.

Recovering a deleted IMS public key, recipe, or image record uses the following workflow:

The records being undeleted are moved to from the deleted collection to the collection of available items. Any restored records will have the same IMS ID values as before being undeleted.
Any Simple Storage Service (S3) artifacts that are associated with the records being undeleted are renamed within their S3 buckets so as to make them available under their original key name.

Undelete procedure

The steps in this procedure assume that a deleted image is being recovered. The same process can be followed if recovering a deleted public key or recipe.

(ncn-mw#) List the deleted image.

cray ims deleted images list --format toml

Excerpt of example output (note the value in the id field):

[[results]]
created = "2018-12-04T17:25:52.482514+00:00"
deleted = "2020-11-03T09:57:31.746521+00:00"
id = "4e78488d-4d92-4675-9d83-97adfc17cb19"
name = "sles_15_image.squashfs"

[results.link]
type = "s3"
path = "/deleted/4e78488d-4d92-4675-9d83-97adfc17cb19/sles_15_image.squashfs"
etag = ""

(ncn-mw#) Use the undelete operation to recover the image.

cray ims deleted images update IMS_IMAGE_ID --operation undelete

(ncn-mw#) List the deleted images to verify the recovered image is no longer in the collection of deleted items.
```
cray ims deleted images list
```

(ncn-mw#) List the IMS images to verify the image was recovered.

cray ims images list --format toml

Excerpt of example output:

[[results]]
created = "2018-12-04T17:25:52.482514+00:00"
id = "4e78488d-4d92-4675-9d83-97adfc17cb19"
name = "sles_15_image.squashfs"

[results.link]
type = "s3"
path = "/4e78488d-4d92-4675-9d83-97adfc17cb19/sles_15_image.squashfs"
etag = ""