Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/5380 Post a follow up: http://drupal.org/project/comments/add/5380 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: user system Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: ax Updated by: robertDouglass Status: patch (code needs review) Why do we need a user besides uid=0 for cron? Just because the project module writes anonymous on certain closed issues? If cron runs with uid=0 most of the time anyway, why don't we just hardcode that in instead of creating a new type of user? robertDouglass Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fri, 23 Jan 2004 23:33:00 +0000 : ax we currently have some problems caused by the undefined state of $user in the cause of cron runs. sometimes it's "Anonymous", sometimes it picks up the currently logged in user (i think). I stumbled upon this when reading issues closed by "Anonymous" caused by the automatic cron closure when issues are fixed. i always think "isn't it strange that "Anonymous" can close issues just as she feels like?" there are quite some related issues - search this site for "cron user". couldn't a cron user solve these problems? a la if (REQUEST_URI) == cron.php then $user = <cron_user>, with <cron_user> having some special properties such as showing "Automatically" for closed issues, being possible to excluded in statistics, putting the rss author from imported rss nodes into nodes author field, having special access checks etc. i didn't think about this much, but thought it is worth filing here. please discuss, elaborate - and don't flame me if i'm too off ;) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Wed, 11 Feb 2004 05:04:29 +0000 : Chris Johnson Sounds like a good idea to me. It's one of many things I'd like to change if I get time to work on it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:25:42 +0000 : Philippe Couln't we just write this in cron.php: <?php $cronuser = variable_get('cron_cronuser','nobody'); if ($cronuser = 'nobody'){   $user = user_load(array()); //I believe this results in Anonymous?? }else{   $user = user_load(array('name' => $cronuser)); } ?> We can set the variable cron_cronuser in a page like admin/cron. If the site administrator doesn't set a value, cron uses Anonymous for everything (not some user that happens to be logged on). If a valid user name is set, the site admin can give the cron user special privileges. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fri, 01 Oct 2004 18:41:16 +0000 : Philippe Setting the user like this in cron.php sends a cookie. (How? Where? Can we prevent this?) So everybody can get "cron" privileges by loading cron.php once. We could fix this by making cron.php accessible only from localhost (in .htaccess). Any ideas? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fri, 01 Oct 2004 21:11:37 +0000 : Philippe Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/cron_uid.patch (3.62 KB) This patch lets the admin select a UID for cron in the admin/settings page. The variable name in which this is stored is 'cron_uid'. When cron.php is loaded, it sets a variable $cron_is_running. If this variable is set, no session will be opened (and no cookies will be sent). The cron page will use the Anonymous user (uid==0) if cron_uid is not set. Note that the site admin should create a "cron" user before setting the UID. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sun, 13 Mar 2005 19:18:05 +0000 : Chris Johnson Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/cron_uid2.patch (3.19 KB) Previous patch still applies cleanly to HEAD and code algorith looks good on inspection. However, there are some style problems and one ugly bit using StdClass(), so I have re-rolled the patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sun, 13 Mar 2005 19:37:14 +0000 : killes@www.drop.org I like the idea, some comments, though: +if (!$cron_is_running) { + session_start(); +} Is this neccessary? 'User ID '.$cron_uid.' does not exist' ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sun, 13 Mar 2005 20:11:09 +0000 : killes@www.drop.org 'User ID '.$cron_uid.' does not exist' < == needs to be made translatable. Setting to active. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mon, 14 Mar 2005 05:56:17 +0000 : Chris Johnson Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/cron_uid3.patch (3.29 KB) Ooops. Sorry I missed that text that needed translating. New patch attached with that bit corrected. Yes, I think the if (!$cron_is_running) code is needed to keep the cron user from creating many unneeded sessions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mon, 14 Mar 2005 09:48:51 +0000 : stefan nagtegaal I am all for the idea of introducing a special id for running the cronjobs, but the approach you took here is far from perfect imo.. After looking at your patch, there are several questions and remarks that came up to my mind: I agree with Gerhard that the $cron_is_running is probably unneeded, I think it's better todo: <?php if (!variable_get('cron_busy', true)) {   session_start(); } ?> I think that this is much to technical. Severa newbies will probable ask what a user id is, or what cron jobs are.. From both usability and userfriendlyness this patch is a big -1 from me.. I would suggest todo the following: - Make a new user in the db called 'Cron' with a user id -1, or something like that.. That way you don't have to add extra options to the administration, and the way of implementing should be much cleaner. Also does it improves usability... What do you think? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mon, 14 Mar 2005 13:11:44 +0000 : Anonymous Hi, The functionality is great, but your interface is not. IMO you should just choose good defaults and leave it with that. Why would users want to choose "UIDs" ofr "cron Jobs". Joe user should not have to think about UIDs and Crons. IT should Just Work[tm]. I know there are lots of places in Drupal where this is not the case either, but we are working on that. So when we introduce new functionality we should do it good at once. Why not go for Stefans suggestion of choosing a cron UID and jsut leave it like that. UIDs are not really used anyway, so you can choose just any UID (just the next one available, most often will be '2'). Bèr ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mon, 14 Mar 2005 13:45:54 +0000 : javanaut "Make a new user in the db called 'Cron' with a user id -1" Just on a technical note, the database type for uids is "unsigned" and -1 won't work. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mon, 14 Mar 2005 19:08:48 +0000 : killes@www.drop.org @Chris: I am pretty sue that this patch will not be usefull if the cron user does not get a session. Drupal relies on the session to authenticate the user. If you are worried about too many sessions, you should make sure the session is clossed at the end of the run. his could be done in cron.php. @Stefan, Ber: I think we should introduce just a standard user and assign the "authneticated user" role to him. The set the variable to that uid so we can check which user it is. The problem is that we cannot create the user from database.mysql beacuse the next uid would be No. 1 which is reserved. So we would need to create the user on the first visit to the admin/settings page. We could also use drupal_set_message to inform the admin of this. We should also extent the relevant help text. While we are at it we could make the anon user use the db tabe for its name too and not a variable. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mon, 14 Mar 2005 20:33:00 +0000 : Chris Johnson Looks like we are sort of in a corner. Really the cron user should be in the database at install time, but we have to reserve uid 1 for the first user. Maybe there is another way to do that without having the first entry to admin create the cron user? That seems hackish to me. I agree that the anonymous user should also be completely coded into the database, and not a variable. The current methods causes anomolous behaviors. I, in fact, wrote several patches to do that a long time ago (http://drupal.org/node/5639). I looked at updating that patch a couple of months ago, but the new unregistered user comment capability where the user can enter his name made the code a lot more complicated. Maybe I will get motivated to try it again. If only my patch had been applied the first time! :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mon, 14 Mar 2005 21:21:12 +0000 : Olen How about creating a bunch of "reserved" users (like most linux distributions do)? uid 1 = root uid 2 = cron uid 3 - 8 = reserved for later use uid 9 = anonymous And then let the admin log in as root the first time. We still let him/her change the username of any of these users, so it should not cause to many problems for new installations. Older ones would either just have to live with it, or do a lot of 'UPDATE module_table SET uid=X WHERE uid=2'-queries. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mon, 14 Mar 2005 22:33:32 +0000 : Bèr Kessels What about following the linux thing, and start counting at 500 for normal users? That way people will recognise it, and numbers do not matter anyway. I mean, there is really no difference between 4 and 500, other than thats its a different number. 500 makes just as much sense as 10, or 2 or 4. Bèr ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Tue, 15 Mar 2005 12:59:18 +0000 : Philippe The reason why I created the "ugly" user interface, and let the site admin choose a cron-user ID in the settings page is because of backward compatibility with existing installations. (guess what: my site IS an existing installation) Perhaps another option is to give special users a user ID close to 2147483647 (MAXINT). That way it won't interfere with existing users. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thu, 16 Jun 2005 23:12:05 +0000 : degerrit At the risk of being publicly humiliated, and in the spirit of "there's no such thing as a stupid question" ... what exactly is the (security?) issue with adding: $user = user_load(array('uid' => 1)); in cron.php? I have two sites with node_privacy_by_role (NPBR) enabled, and cron does not index all the pages as a consequence (except when it is given a user id with full access like above). It took me some puzzling to figure out why the sites seemed stuck at "11% of the site has been indexed" or something similar. Of course, now a non-authenticated user can see excerpts of "private" pages through the search, which could be a big deal. Anyway, being able to choose a search user would solve the problem with NPBR as well it seems.