Comment 4 for bug 1300850

>it may cause danger that account will never be reclaimed when all container-server fail to update and give up.

I'm proposing to delete the container databases, not give up on contianer-updater. However, I take your point: if we delete the container database, the account might not get reclaimed. However, to get into this state, all three copies of the account must be down for a month (or conversely, the container db must be off line for a month). The upshot either way is that *some* database file becomes un-reclaimable.

> As part of this process, the reported_*_timestamps are set to zero (see container.backend._newid).
>> I think this is the root of this problem.

I'm reluctant to change that -- there must be good reason for the __newid() function. This is also used when you do a merge of records (vs. complete file copy)

In addition, this would only prevent future un-reclaimable databases -- not clean out my existing database files.

Can I suggest that you make comments against the proposed change at: https://review.openstack.org/#/c/84696
The Swift core developers tend to interact more in gerret than in launchpad