hosting_task_log entries are not deleted when task is

I've taken a crack at this but I'm getting hung up on the rather complex world of Drush / Provision architecture, and I could use a pointer.

Basically, I've created a task called 'Delete tasks' that you can run on a site to (duh) delete tasks and task logs. In order for this to work, I've created a provision-task_delete Drush command that takes a list of nids as an argument and deletes those tasks in the Aegir database using node_delete(). The problem is that the Drush command is getting called in the context of the affected site, rather than the Aegir database, so node_delete is actually running on that site's database. How can I run node_delete() on the Aegir database?

Thanks for the tip - I released my module at https://drupal.org/project/hosting_task_gc

Initially I wanted to make it as general as possible, which is why I tried to implement the provision task. I changed my mind and ended up making it dead-simple, since that gets 90% of the job done with 10% of the effort :) It's only processed 1/3 of the deleted sites in my Aegir installation, and already my {hosting_task_log} table has shrunk from 1GB to 700MB!

Basically, the module deletes any tasks (entries in {hosting_task}) associated with deleted sites. It also deletes any 'orphaned' task logs (entries in {hosting_task_log}). This seems like a sane initial solution - later on, it might make sense to allow for deletion of old logs on live sites, for some definition of 'old'. But like I said, this simple solution solves a big part of the problem (for me anyway).

The orphaned task log occur due to a possible design flaw in Aegir- when tasks get deleted, their associated task logs are not deleted. There should probably be a hook_delete to take care of this. However, in order for this to work, an 'nid' field would needed to be added to {hosting_task_log}.

I'm leaving this issue open if you want to 'fix' this problem, but feel free to close it as 'won't fix'.

I think the attached patch should fix this. It deletes task logs in hook_delete() and hook_delete_revision(), and adds the necessary nid field to the {hosting_task_log} table. However, it is completely untested. My only Aegir installation is a production one, so I can't really test this myself.

A couple of other notes: update 6006 might be VERY resource-intensive, as it has to update quite a huge number of rows. Not sure if that's a problem or what to do about it. Also, I think updates should be counting like 61xx, not 60xx. Don't know if that's worth fixing at this point or not.

Sorry, I forgot to mention in my summary in #6 that the patch does delete existing orphaned entries. Update 6006 adds the nid field to {hosting_task_log}, populates the nid field, then removes orphaned entries.

Looks reasonable, thanks for following up.