Scheduled Data Cleanup¶

To prevent the OrbitEntry table from growing indefinitely, you should schedule the orbit_prune management command to run periodically.

1. Using Crontab (Linux/macOS)¶

If you are running on a Linux server, the simplest method is to use cron.

Open your crontab:

crontab -e

Add the following line to run the cleanup daily at midnight:

# Prune Orbit data every day at 00:00, keeping last 24h
0 0 * * * /path/to/your/venv/bin/python /path/to/your/project/manage.py orbit_prune --hours 24

To keep 7 days of data but preserve errors indefinitely:

0 0 * * * /path/to/your/venv/bin/python /path/to/your/project/manage.py orbit_prune --hours 168 --keep-important

2. Using Celery Beat¶

If your project uses Celery and django-celery-beat, you can define a periodic task.

in settings.py or your celery config:

from celery.schedules import crontab

CELERY_BEAT_SCHEDULE = {
    'orbit-prune-daily': {
        'task': 'orbit.tasks.prune_orbit_entries', # You might need to wrap the command in a task or use a generic command task
        'schedule': crontab(minute=0, hour=0),
        'args': (24,), 
    },
}

Since Orbit doesn't ship with a built-in Celery task (to avoid forcing a dependency), you can create a wrapper task in your project:

# your_project/tasks.py
from celery import shared_task
from django.core.management import call_command

@shared_task
def prune_orbit_entries():
    call_command("orbit_prune", hours=24, keep_important=True)

3. Windows Task Scheduler¶

If you are developing or hosting on Windows:

1. Open Task Scheduler.
2. Create a Basic Task named "Orbit Prune".
3. Trigger: Daily.
4. Action: Start a program.
5. Program/script: path\to\python.exe
6. Add arguments: manage.py orbit_prune --hours 24
7. Start in: path\to\your\project\

Command Reference¶