'Could not load a valid user' BUT: 'Everyone' privs are OK

RT Users
1

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I’m getting this error message from rt-mailgate:

not ok - Could not load a valid user at /users/ist-rt/bin/rt-mailgate-real line 109, <> line 1.

when I run rt-mailgate with ‘–debug’ from the command line. Yet I’ve
given the ‘Everyone’ group rights to create and reply to tickets.

In fact, the RT database was copied over from another RT instance, so the
entire configuration is the same. Yet on the original RT instance, I have
no trouble with rt-mailgate.

Could someone suggest other things besides the above-mentioned rights that
could cause the ‘could not load a valid user’ message?

I should mention what is different in the new RT environment:

o RT 3.6.3 instead of 3.4.5

o I run rt-mailgate from my own account on a ‘virtual application server’
that’s on a different system than where RT is.

o The mail server receiving email for RT (on the aforementioned ‘different
system’) is running exim, not sendmail.

In order for rt-mailgate to work, I must wrap it in a script that sets the
PERL5LIB environment variable to point to all my local perl libraries,
where, for example, Crypt::SSLeay is installed (needed by rt-mailgate
because the RT URL is ‘https’).

That’s why the above message refers to ‘rt-mailgate-real’, which is the
‘real’ rt-mailgate, called by my wrapper script that’s named
‘rt-mailgate’. (I did this because it’s a headache to get the mail
sysadmins to change the aliases, where I had already asked them to use
‘rt-mailgate’).

Anyway, can you think of some reason I’m getting an error that normally
would be associated with insufficient rights for unprivileged users? Are
there other rights besides those of the ‘Everyone’ group I should be
looking at?

Of course, since the rest of the configuration should be identical to that
of the other RT instance that does work, I can’t see that it’s a rights
issue.

Unless, naturally, I’m overlooking something.

Thanks.

Mike

Mike Friedman Information Services & Technology
mikef@ack.Berkeley.EDU 2484 Shattuck Avenue
1-510-642-1410 University of California at Berkeley
Socrates and Berkeley Scholars Web Hosting Services Have Been Retired | Web Platform Services http://ist.berkeley.edu

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2

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This is driving me crazy. I’m using a copy of the database that was
running under RT 3.4.5, where rt-mailgate works fine. Using that db on
3.6.3, rt-mailgate insists on returning the message ‘Could not load a
valid user’, even though group ‘Everyone’ has rights to create and reply
to tickets.

I’m even running rt-mailgate on the same machine that RT is on, as well as
remotely (where it will run in production), with the same results. This
is from the command line, so there’s no MTA involved at all.

The only difference I can see between the RT instance where rt-mailgate
works and where it doesn’t is that the former is 3.4.5 and the latter is
3.6.3. As I said, the database on the latter is just a copy of the one on
the former.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Mike

Mike Friedman Information Services & Technology
mikef@ack.Berkeley.EDU 2484 Shattuck Avenue
1-510-642-1410 University of California at Berkeley
Socrates and Berkeley Scholars Web Hosting Services Have Been Retired | Web Platform Services http://ist.berkeley.edu

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3

A straight copy?

You need to run the db upgrades, per the README

Mike Friedman wrote:

This is driving me crazy. I’m using a copy of the database that was
running under RT 3.4.5, where rt-mailgate works fine. Using that db
on 3.6.3, rt-mailgate insists on returning the message ‘Could not load
a valid user’, even though group ‘Everyone’ has rights to create and
reply to tickets.

I’m even running rt-mailgate on the same machine that RT is on, as
well as remotely (where it will run in production), with the same
results. This is from the command line, so there’s no MTA involved at
all.

The only difference I can see between the RT instance where
rt-mailgate works and where it doesn’t is that the former is 3.4.5 and
the latter is 3.6.3. As I said, the database on the latter is just a
copy of the one on the former.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Mike

Mike Friedman Information Services & Technology
mikef@ack.Berkeley.EDU 2484 Shattuck Avenue
1-510-642-1410 University of California at Berkeley
Socrates and Berkeley Scholars Web Hosting Services Have Been Retired | Web Platform Services http://ist.berkeley.edu

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Drew Barnes
Applications Analyst
Raymond Walters College
University of Cincinnati

4

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1On Thu, 17 May 2007 at 12:57 (-0400), Drew Barnes wrote:

A straight copy?

You need to run the db upgrades, per the README

Drew,

Yes. To be more specific, I unloaded the db, had our db admin reload it
on the new machine, then I ran the RT upgrades to bring the schema from
3.4.5 to 3.6.3. From what I can see, via the web interface, the data and
configs look exactly the same on both RTs.

In particular, the ‘Everyone’ group has these Global rights:

CreateTicket, ModifySelf, ReplyToTicket

I’ve been testing rt-mailgate by running it on the same machine where RT
(3.6.3) is running, using the command line interface, e.g.,

rt-mailgate --debug --queue general --action correspond --url https://…

I then supply just the string ‘xxx’ in stdin and get the error message:

not ok - Could not load a valid user ...

If I run the same command but point to the URL of my 3.4.5 system, I get a
message like this:

okTicket: 631Queue: Owner: NobodyStatus: Subject: Requestor: at .../rt-mailgate line 109, <> line 1

which looks like ‘success’ to me. And, indeed, an empty ticket does get
created in the 3.4.5 RT.

In the latter case, of course, the new ticket is owned by ‘Nobody’. I
checked my 3.6.3 system to make sure that user ‘Nobody’ was properly
configured. Of course, it’s set up exactly the same on both systems,
since the 3.6.3 database came from the 3.4.5 database.

What else can I look for in my 3.6.3 system that might account for this
difference in behavior? I’ve run out of ideas.

Thanks.

Mike

Mike Friedman Information Services & Technology
mikef@ack.Berkeley.EDU 2484 Shattuck Avenue
1-510-642-1410 University of California at Berkeley
Socrates and Berkeley Scholars Web Hosting Services Have Been Retired | Web Platform Services http://ist.berkeley.edu

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5

[SNIP]
Drew,

Yes. To be more specific, I unloaded the db, had our db admin reload it

on the new machine, then I ran the RT upgrades to bring the schema from
3.4.5 to 3.6.3. From what I can see, via the web interface, the data
and
configs look exactly the same on both RTs.

In particular, the ‘Everyone’ group has these Global rights:

CreateTicket, ModifySelf, ReplyToTicket

I’ve been testing rt-mailgate by running it on the same machine where RT

(3.6.3) is running, using the command line interface, e.g.,

rt-mailgate --debug --queue general --action correspond --url
https://…

I then supply just the string ‘xxx’ in stdin and get the error message:

not ok - Could not load a valid user ...

If I run the same command but point to the URL of my 3.4.5 system, I get
a
message like this:

okTicket: 631Queue: Owner: NobodyStatus: Subject: Requestor: at

…/rt-mailgate line 109, <> line 1
[/SNIP]

This is the same problem I have … In the old installation 3.4.5 it
works fine but when I reinstalled it (The only difference is that I
dropped the db) mailgate is no longer working … With the same errors
that you have.

Best regards
Kim

6

is there any chance that you have not provided --action argument?On 5/18/07, Kim G. Nielsen kgn@billetnet.dk wrote:

[SNIP]
Drew,

Yes. To be more specific, I unloaded the db, had our db admin reload it

on the new machine, then I ran the RT upgrades to bring the schema from
3.4.5 to 3.6.3. From what I can see, via the web interface, the data
and
configs look exactly the same on both RTs.

In particular, the ‘Everyone’ group has these Global rights:

CreateTicket, ModifySelf, ReplyToTicket

I’ve been testing rt-mailgate by running it on the same machine where RT

(3.6.3) is running, using the command line interface, e.g.,

rt-mailgate --debug --queue general --action correspond --url
https://…

I then supply just the string ‘xxx’ in stdin and get the error message:

not ok - Could not load a valid user ...

If I run the same command but point to the URL of my 3.4.5 system, I get
a
message like this:

okTicket: 631Queue: Owner: NobodyStatus: Subject: Requestor: at

…/rt-mailgate line 109, <> line 1
[/SNIP]

This is the same problem I have … In the old installation 3.4.5 it
works fine but when I reinstalled it (The only difference is that I
dropped the db) mailgate is no longer working … With the same errors
that you have.

Best regards
Kim

The rt-users Archives

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Best regards, Ruslan.

7

[SNIP]-----Original Message-----
From: ruslan.zakirov@gmail.com [mailto:ruslan.zakirov@gmail.com] On
Behalf Of Ruslan Zakirov
Sent: 18. maj 2007 07:48
To: Kim G. Nielsen
Cc: RT User List
Subject: Re: [rt-users] Is there a change in the rt-mailgate interface
in3.6.3?

is there any chance that you have not provided --action argument?

[/SNIP]

No … This is the line I’m testing with:

echo test|/etc/smrsh/rt-mailgate --debug --queue General --action

correspond --url http://localhost/rt3

Best regards
Kim

8

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Hash: SHA1On Fri, 18 May 2007 at 09:48 (+0400), Ruslan Zakirov wrote:

is there any chance that you have not provided --action argument?

In my case, as I indicated in my earlier post, I did supply ‘–action’.
Here’s the command I’ve been testing with:

rt-mailgate --debug --queue general --action correspond --url https://…

It’s really mysterious. If I run the exact same command, on the same
machine, but change the URL to my 3.4.5 RT, it works. But it fails with

not ok - Could not load a valid user …

on my 3.6.3 system that is configured the same.

I even went into Global Rights, removed ‘CreateTicket’ from Everybody,
then added it back in, to make sure it’s really there (!). Same result.

What else could be going on here?

Mike

Mike Friedman Information Services & Technology
mikef@ack.Berkeley.EDU 2484 Shattuck Avenue
1-510-642-1410 University of California at Berkeley
Socrates and Berkeley Scholars Web Hosting Services Have Been Retired | Web Platform Services http://ist.berkeley.edu

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9

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1On Thu, 17 May 2007 at 23:09 (-0700), Mike Friedman wrote:

On Fri, 18 May 2007 at 09:48 (+0400), Ruslan Zakirov wrote:

is there any chance that you have not provided --action argument?

In my case, as I indicated in my earlier post, I did supply ‘–action’.
Here’s the command I’ve been testing with:

rt-mailgate --debug --queue general --action correspond --url https://…

I believe I’ve found the problem and it seems there IS a change between
3.4.5 and 3.6.3. The change is in parsing of the incoming email headers.
In my test, using rt-mailgate from the command line, I just entered ‘xxx’,
which contains no real mail header information. This works on 3.4.5 but
fails on 3.6.3.

If, however, my input to rt-mailgate contains at least a valid 'From: ’
line, then a ticket gets created. So, it seems mail header parsing has
changed enough between the two releases to account for my symptoms.

BTW: A single valid SMTP 'From ’ line also causes the error. So, it
seems that if any real mail comes in without a 'From: ’ header line, RT
won’t create a ticket for it, even if the SMTP envelope has usable
information in its 'From ’ line. This really is a change from earlier
releases.

Mike

Mike Friedman Information Services & Technology
mikef@ack.Berkeley.EDU 2484 Shattuck Avenue
1-510-642-1410 University of California at Berkeley
Socrates and Berkeley Scholars Web Hosting Services Have Been Retired | Web Platform Services http://ist.berkeley.edu

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10

[SNIP]
I believe I’ve found the problem and it seems there IS a change between
3.4.5 and 3.6.3. The change is in parsing of the incoming email
headers.
In my test, using rt-mailgate from the command line, I just entered
’xxx’,
which contains no real mail header information. This works on 3.4.5 but

fails on 3.6.3.

If, however, my input to rt-mailgate contains at least a valid 'From: '
line, then a ticket gets created. So, it seems mail header parsing has
changed enough between the two releases to account for my symptoms.

BTW: A single valid SMTP 'From ’ line also causes the error. So, it
seems that if any real mail comes in without a 'From: ’ header line, RT
won’t create a ticket for it, even if the SMTP envelope has usable
information in its 'From ’ line. This really is a change from earlier
releases.
[/SNIP]

Nice! :slight_smile: Actually user creating is not working for me but now my
mailgate works (if I send a email from a valid user) … I can live with
that … Thanks for the info :slight_smile:

Best regards
Kim