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  1. Moodle
  2. MDL-65655

Forum mailings and maintenance jobs fails with "Suspended account" exception

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      Synopsis

      This has been originally reported as a problem on moodle.org after the site was upgraded to 3.7. Moodle stopped sending email notifications to users subscribed to the site forums. Running the task manually led to a failure:

      $ sudo -u www-data php admin/tool/task/cli/schedule_task.php --execute='\mod_forum\task\cron_task'
      		 
      [PID 13107] Execute scheduled task: Forum mailings and maintenance jobs (mod_forum\task\cron_task)
      		 
      [PID 13107] Removing old digest records from 7 days ago.
      		 
      [PID 13107] Removed all old digest records.
      		 
      [PID 13107] Fetching unmailed posts.
      		 
      [PID 13107] Done
      		 
      [PID 13107] Processing post information
      		 
      [PID 13107] Processed 148 posts
      		 
      [PID 13107] Filling caches
      		 
      [PID 13107]   Filling course cache
      		 
      [PID 13107]   Done
      		 
      [PID 13107]   Filling forum cache
      		 
      [PID 13107]   Done
      		 
      [PID 13107]   Filling discussion cache
      		 
      [PID 13107]   Done
      		 
      [PID 13107]   Filling user subscription cache
      		 
      [PID 13107]   Done
      		 
      [PID 13107]   Filling digest cache
      		 
      [PID 13107]   Done
      		 
      [PID 13107] All caches filled
      		 
      [PID 13107] Queueing user tasks.
      		 
      [PID 13107]   Processing 6563 users
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 5 messages for 1174932
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 51 messages for 12568
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 18 messages for 1180476
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 23 messages for 1244321
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 0 messages for 2628319
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 0 messages for 553043
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 0 messages for 965252
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 0 messages for 1070092
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 1 digests and 0 messages for 63444
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 0 messages for 2227622
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 18 messages for 15479
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 26 messages for 827446
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 23 messages for 391245
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 0 messages for 1818686
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 29 messages for 276376
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 18 messages for 1146882
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 0 messages for 1795164
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 0 messages for 120894
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 0 messages for 2637212
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 1 digests and 0 messages for 200812
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 3 messages for 890398
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 0 messages for 1191309
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 8 messages for 150934
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 1 digests and 0 messages for 429480
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 22 messages for 245443
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 0 messages for 2597442
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 0 messages for 2177440
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 0 messages for 1391647
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 0 messages for 109588
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 20 messages for 1199631
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 0 messages for 2050058
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 3 messages for 843546
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 0 messages for 2643385
      		 
      [PID 13107]     Queued 0 digests and 0 messages for 1964410
      		 
      [PID 13107] ... used 293 dbqueries
      		 
      [PID 13107] ... used 2.4785959720612 seconds
      		 
      [PID 13107] Scheduled task failed: Forum mailings and maintenance jobs (mod_forum\task\cron_task),Suspended account

      Analysis of the problem

      • The reason for this is that the new forum cron code attempts to create adhoc delivery jobs for users who have been inactivated.
      • If such users had subscribed before they were inactivated, they are returned by the method mod_forum\subscriptions\fetch_subscribed_users()
      • Later in the processing chain, we attempt to queue an adhoc task to be run as the given user (making use of the MDL-59084 feature): We call mod_forum\task\cron_task\queue_user_tasks() which in turn calls core\task\manager::queue_adhoc_task()
      • In the core\task\manager::queue_adhoc_task() there is an input check that the adhoc task's user is an active one: core_user::require_active_user() which fails and throws the said exception in two not-covered cases: 

                if ($checksuspended and $user->suspended) {
        		 
                    throw new moodle_exception('suspended', 'auth');
        		 
                }
        		 
         
        		 
                if ($checknologin and $user->auth == 'nologin') {
        		 
                    throw new moodle_exception('suspended', 'auth');
        		 
                }

      Solution

      We need to make sure that mod_forum\subscriptions\fetch_subscribed_users() does not include users that would be later detected as inactive.

      Steps to reproduce

      1. Apply the submitted patch
      2. Undo the changes of the file mod/forum/classes/subscriptions.php
      3. Run the mod/forum/tests/mail_test.php unit tests

            mudrd8mz David Mudrák (@mudrd8mz)
            mudrd8mz David Mudrák (@mudrd8mz)
            Andrew Lyons Andrew Lyons
            Adrian Greeve Adrian Greeve
            CiBoT CiBoT
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            1 Vote for this issue
            Watchers:
            4 Start watching this issue

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