"No user with a GECOS found" when running rt-clean-shorteners-5 cron job

RT Users
1

The Debian package of RT 5 has a cron job that runs hourly, and it fails with an error message:

Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2025 15:00:03 +0000
From: root@rude.torproject.org (Cron Daemon)
To: www-data@rude.torproject.org
Subject: Cron <www-data@rude> [ -x /usr/sbin/rt-clean-shorteners-5 ] && /usr/sbin/rt-clean-shorteners-5

[87289] [Wed Jun  4 15:00:03 2025] [error]: No user with a GECOS (unix login) of 'www-data' was found. (/usr/share/request-tracker5/lib/RT/Interface/CLI.pm:123)

I dug in the source and don’t quite understand it: the shortener class expects a User (as in RT user!) to be loaded, but then we don’t have a www-data user in RT… What’s the right fix for this? Do we create a dummy www-data user in RT? What privileges should it have?

2

You can give a user the Unix login value www-data

3

okay, but which user? do we make a new one? is there a magical one that should have been created but wasn’t? what privileges should it have?

4

I’d say its safe to give it to a super user (like root) since you want the user cron is invoking to be able to do anything