This is a text-only version of the following page on https://raymii.org: --- Title : RT (Request Tracker) - find and delete big attachments Author : Remy van Elst Date : 17-01-2013 URL : https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/RT_find__and_delete_big_attachments.html Format : Markdown/HTML --- RT (Request Tracker) can save attachments. It saves these in the database (mysql). I had an issue where my mysqldump used in backupping RT would fail due to an `mysqldump: Error 2020: Got packet bigger than 'max_allowed_packet' bytes when dumping table Attachments at row: xxxxx` error. Adding the `--max_allowed_packet=500M` parameter to the mysqldump command didn't work, so here is how to search and find big attachments in RT using mysql. This is tested on RT 4.0.8, but the RT install has been running and updated since RT 3.

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### Connect to MySQL If you have your database on the same box as RT, connect using the following command, where you replace `rt_db_u` with the RT MySQL username: mysql -u rt_db_u -p It will now ask for the RT MySQL password, which you can find in the RT `SiteConfig.pm` file. Enter it and press ENTER. If you have your MySQL running on a dedicated database server, connect to it remotely via the following command, again replacing `rt_db_u` with your database name and `database_blade_043` with your database servers hostname/IP: mysql -u rt_db_u -h database_blade_034 -p ### Select the RT database Select the RT database with the following MySQL command, replacing `rt_db` with the name of your RT MySQL database: mysql> use rt ### Finding the big attachments mysql> SELECT DISTINCT Transactions.ObjectId,Attachments.Subject FROM Attachments LEFT OUTER JOIN Transactions ON Transactions.Id = Attachments.TransactionId WHERE Transactions.ObjectType = 'RT::Ticket' AND LENGTH(Attachments.Content) > 4000000; This command will display all the ticket ID's and Subjects from items where the attachment size is more than 4 MB (4194304 Bytes). The outer join is because [ticket ID's are[1]][2] [not Attachments ID's[2].][3] It might take a while, the query took about 4 minutes on my DB. This was my result: +----------+---------------------------------------------------------------+ | ObjectId | Subject | +----------+---------------------------------------------------------------+ | 1291 | | | 1546 | | | 1562 | [filename] | | 2016 | | | [...] | [...] | | 85579 | [filename] | +----------+---------------------------------------------------------------+ 6878 rows in set (1.89 sec) If you get the following error: ERROR 2020 (HY000): Got packet bigger than 'max_allowed_packet' bytes Reconnect to the MySQL database with the following parameter added to the command: --max_allowed_packet=500M [More info][4] Now you can go to those tickets, and remove the attachments. If you don't want to get blank Subjects, you can execute the following query: mysql> SELECT DISTINCT Transactions.ObjectId,Attachments.Subject FROM Attachments LEFT OUTER JOIN Transactions ON Transactions.Id = Attachments.TransactionId WHERE Transactions.ObjectType = 'RT::Ticket' AND LENGTH(Attachments.Content) > 4000000 AND Attachments.Subject != ""; ### Notes Do note that this is also possible via the Shredder, using the Attachments filter. [1]: https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=7435ae6b8212 [2]: http://lists.bestpractical.com/pipermail/rt-users/2013-January/078909.html [3]: http://lists.bestpractical.com/pipermail/rt-users/2007-June/046395.html [4]: https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/packet-too-large.html --- License: All the text on this website is free as in freedom unless stated otherwise. This means you can use it in any way you want, you can copy it, change it the way you like and republish it, as long as you release the (modified) content under the same license to give others the same freedoms you've got and place my name and a link to this site with the article as source. This site uses Google Analytics for statistics and Google Adwords for advertisements. You are tracked and Google knows everything about you. Use an adblocker like ublock-origin if you don't want it. All the code on this website is licensed under the GNU GPL v3 license unless already licensed under a license which does not allows this form of licensing or if another license is stated on that page / in that software: This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see . Just to be clear, the information on this website is for meant for educational purposes and you use it at your own risk. I do not take responsibility if you screw something up. Use common sense, do not 'rm -rf /' as root for example. If you have any questions then do not hesitate to contact me. See https://raymii.org/s/static/About.html for details.