Prevent rapid repository growth caused by Linkchecker in CQ 5.6.1

With CQ 5.6.1, the property referencedBy has been introduced in order to keep track of the pages that reference the same link.

However, in case a link is referenced from too many pages like external link in the page footer, this causes Linkchecker to perform a lot of JCR writes/update causing CPU peaks as well as performance decreases, mainly caused by the JCR locks.

In such cases where performance is compromised, it is recommended to disable this feature by following the steps below:

1. Delete /var/linkchecker (it will be recreated automatically)
2. Install the hotfix cq-5.6.1-hotfix-4984 (if SP2 is installed, this hotfix is not required and can be skipped).
3. In the OSGI configuration console, open "Day CQ Link Checker Info Storage Service” and deselect "Save external link references” option. If it doesn’t appear in the configurations, restart the CQ instance.

Please note that, disabling this option will not cause automatic removal of the existing referencedBy property values. To achieve this, remove /var/linkchecker.

Applies to

Adobe AEM 5.6.1 witht the hotfix 4984

Last updated :  11/17/2014

keywords: repository grows, growth, link checker