Purge Log History?

[ecinfant]

Dear all,

Every 2 months or so, Zen Cart will warn me that "The Admin Activity Log table has records over 2 months old and should be achived to conserve space...."

What should I do? Should I click the following "reset" button?


I'm afraid that once I click the reset, all my data, including the clients and order data, will be disappeared.

Would you please kindly help me figure it out?
Thank you so much!
Ecinfant

[stevesh]

As it says on the box, that's the Admin Activity log. It stores your, well, admin activity, and has no connection to any other section of your database. It's safe to reset it unless you think you might need to see past admin activity (you won't, unless you have multiple admins (and probably not then) or have been hacked).

[lat9]

The only thing that is "reset" by clicking that button is the admin_activity_logs database table. That table stores information regarding what the various admin users have done over the past few months. Keeping that information is an absolute must if you are capturing credit-card information directly on your website. Resetting that information does nothing to your products, customers or orders.

First, go to your admin's Admin Access Management->Admin Activity Logs page. Choose "Export as CSV" as the "Export File Format", check the "Save file on server" box and click "Go". That will save the current contents of your store's activity logs to a .CSV.

Then, click the reset button to reset the activity logs.

[mc12345678]

As it says on the box, that's the Admin Activity log. It stores your, well, admin activity, and has no connection to any other section of your database. It's safe to reset it unless you think you might need to see past admin activity (you won't, unless you have multiple admins (and probably not then) or have been hacked).

Are those bolded, the only reasons? I thought it was for PCI Compliance to be able to maintain a record for a minimum of one year... I.e., to follow the associated link(s) to store a copy of the records prior to deleting them... This way the database is cleared of the information (decreasing database size and increasing rate of database access), the records are available for review and to be able maintain them for whatever duration is required...

[RodG]

Every 2 months or so, Zen Cart will warn me that "The Admin Activity Log table has records over 2 months old and should be achived to conserve space...."

What should I do? Should I click the following "reset" button?

I'm afraid that once I click the reset, all my data, including the clients and order data, will be disappeared.

The simple answer is 'Yes' just click the reset button (you'll then be greeted with another screen to confirm this action).

The longer answer is:
Although it is *possible* to cause a database corruption with this reset, I've never actually heard of it happening to anyone, and the chances of you losing clients, product or orders data are so remote that it probably isn't worth a second thought.

Having said that though, it is always wise to make a backup of the database before doing this anyway. Murphey's Law dictates that if you go to the trouble of making a backup then you'll never need to use it. <smiles>

The other reason for making a backup before hitting the reset is because the chances are you haven't made a backup in the last couple of months anyway, and this really isn't good. You need to get into the habit of making regular backups at least once a week. Most of us with experience will even do this on a daily basis. After all, you never know when that hard drive holding your data is going to fail, and the most recent the backup, the less work it is to recover (and less data being lost forever).

In addition to the database backups, if your site handles Credit Card details then you *must* export this log data and keep a copy for at least 12 months. You can ignore this step if you don't handle CC data.

If you've never done a Database backup before, then NOW is the time to learn.

http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?144

Cheers
RodG