We investigate almost minimal actions of abelian groups and their crossed products. As an application, given multiplicatively independent integers p and q, we show that Furstenberg’s $\times p,\times q$ conjecture holds if and only if the canonical trace is the only faithful extreme tracial state on the $C^*$-algebra of the group $\mathbb {Z}[\frac {1}{pq}]\rtimes \mathbb {Z}^2$. We also compute the primitive ideal space and K-theory of $C^*(\mathbb {Z}[\frac {1}{pq}]\rtimes \mathbb {Z}^2)$.

We characterize the ideals of the semicrossed product $C_0(X)\times _\phi {\mathbb Z}_+$, associated with suitable sequences of closed subsets of X, with left (resp. right) approximate unit. As a consequence, we obtain a complete characterization of ideals with left (resp. right) approximate unit under the assumptions that X is metrizable and the dynamical system $(X,\phi )$ contains no periodic points.