Stale Catalog Entries Persist After Refresh: Is Automatic Cleanup Supported?

Stale Catalog Entries After Refresh

When a Rancher catalog source is refreshed via the catalog.refresh API, entries that have been deleted in the upstream repository are not automatically removed from the Rancher catalog. The catalog list continues to display these stale items until a subsequent manual or automatic cleanup step occurs.

Documentation for Rancher 2.x does not specify an automatic cleanup policy or a configurable flag to enforce removal of such entries. Community discussions note that the absence of automatic cleanup can lead to confusion and clutter in the catalog UI.

Key uncertainties remain about the behavior across Rancher releases and whether any hidden setting or future change will alter this process.

Questions:

• Does Rancher automatically delete catalog entries that are no longer present in the source after a refresh?
• Is there a configuration option or flag that can enable or disable this cleanup behavior?
• Has the behavior changed in newer Rancher releases (e.g., 2.10+)?