Getting email job failures en masse - due to missing user?

Support
1

I’m getting a lot of email job failures, when I check the logs in Sidekiq, I can see that they’re related to a user with ID 2. The failures are on this form:

Jobs::HandledExceptionWrapper: Wrapped NoMethodError: undefined method `email' for nil:NilClass

I think the user with ID 2 was created by accident through logging on with SSO using the wrong email address, and I since cleaned it out. I guess that user ID is somehow still lingering in parts of the system? How can I verify that these issues are indeed relating to a non-existent user, and if so get rid of it?

2

How did you ‘clean it out’? Using the rails console?

3

Yeah I used the rails console to remove the user. I think I removed the main database record. I found there was an SSO record lingering after though, so I reset the SSO records too somehow.

4

Any idea how to troubleshoot what’s going wrong here? As I said, I don’t think there’s a user record with ID 2 any longer. Unless another user was added with that ID in the meantime, there seems to be remnants in the system causing these email errors.

5

Deleting a user is a complicated process, and by doing it on the console you have bypassed all the safeguards in place. If you can restore a backup and do it from the user interface, that would be best.

If not, maybe you could try creating a new user object on the console using the same ID as the old user, and then deleting that user properly. I would strongly recommend taking a backup before attempting that, as I’m not sure exactly what will happen.

3 Likes
6

I don’t have a backup from before doing so unfortunately.

How do I create a new user and delete it (properly)?

7

Take a backup first, this could cause issues

I’ve never done this, but try running:

User.create!(id: 2, password: SecureRandom.hex, email: "temp@example.com", username: 'someusername')

Then that user should appear in the user interface, and you can try deleting it from the admin panel.

8

Thanks! I tried creating the user now, as you said, but it turns out the record with ID 2 is still there, even though I thought I had deleted it! It doesn’t show up among the users in the Discourse UI though. Is there anything I can do further to resolve this issue?

9

Does it appear at /admin/users/39129/username?

10

That gives me a 404 :confused:

11

Oops, I meant to change the number there

/admin/users/2/username

Also sorry for editing your post, I hit the wrong button!

1 Like
12

Ah, that does give me a page of the user!

13

Shall I click Delete User on that page?

1 Like
14

Give it a try. That should then run through the ‘proper’ deletion process

15

There was an error deleting that user. Make sure all posts are deleted before trying to delete the user

16

Check /logs to see a more detailed error (hopefully)

17

I don’t see anything beneath $SITE/logs, but in /shared/log/rails/production.log I can see the following:

Processing by Admin::UsersController#destroy as JSON
  Parameters: {"context"=>"/admin/users/2/username", "delete_posts"=>"true", "id"=>"2"}
  Rendering text template
  Rendered text template (0.0ms)
Completed 418  in 11ms (Views: 3.2ms | ActiveRecord: 3.4ms)
Failed to process hijacked response correctly : undefined method `email' for nil:NilClass
Started GET "/admin/users/2.json?_=1547652146066" for 185.199.104.14 at 2019-01-16 15:22:31 +0000
Processing by Admin::UsersController#show as JSON
  Parameters: {"_"=>"1547652146066", "id"=>"2"}
Completed 200 OK in 64ms (Views: 0.2ms | ActiveRecord: 42.7ms)```
18

Try running

User.find(2).primary_email

on the console. I guess it will say nil?

19 
[2] pry(main)> User.find(2).primary_email
=> nil
20

Ok, it looks like you deleted the UserEmail record rather than the user. So try

u = User.find(2)
u.email = "temp@example.com"
u.save!

Then try deleting from the UI again

3 Likes