Forum OpenACS Q&A: can't access admin pages, but I am site-wide admin

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1: can't access admin pages, but I am site-wide admin
Posted by James Thornton on 09/04/01 07:40 AM
Yesterday, I was having trouble with PostgreSQL (see old msg). My solution was to dump the database, drop the database, and then import it back.

After I did that, I upgraded to AOLserver 3.3ad13 (BTW: it has a bug in nsmain.c with regard to nsd's -s <server> option).

Now, after everything is back up, I can log in, but even though I am the site-wide admin, I cannot access any /admin/ pages -- the message says: "You are not an administrator."

This happens regardless of the browser, so I don't think it's a cookie issue.

Also, I did not dump and drop the database on both of my OpenACS severs, but I cannot access /admin/ on either -- again, I am site- wide admin on both. One site runs OpenACS 3.2.3, and the other site runs 3.2.5.

What could have caused this? And, what's the best method for fixing it?

Thanks.

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2: Response to can't access admin pages, but I am site-wide admin (response to 1)
Posted by James Thornton on 09/04/01 07:55 AM
One other thing: the "Site-Wide Administration" link is included in my workspace (/pvt/home.tcl).
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3: Response to can't access admin pages, but I am site-wide admin (response to 1)
Posted by Jerry Asher on 09/04/01 08:07 AM
I haven't seen anything like this before, but it should be somewhat easy to narrow down (famous last words, eh?). In OpenACS 3.2.5, you want to take a look at /tcl/ad-admin.tcl. The routines to look at are all at the top of the file.

There's ad_administrator_p, and there's the filter, ad_restrict_to_administrator. For some reason, you're pissing that filter off.

Perhaps the easiest thing to do is to instrument the ad_administrator_p to log the user_id it's called with.

I would explore the query: 


select ad_group_member_p($user_id, system_administrator_group_id())
What is system_administrator_group_id() returning? What does ad_group_member_p($user_id, system_administrator_group_id()) return?
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4: Response to can't access admin pages, but I am site-wide admin (response to 1)
Posted by James Thornton on 09/04/01 08:20 AM
For starters...

psql terminal results for BOTH servers... 

james=# select ad_group_member_p(3,system_administrator_group_id());
 ad_group_member_p 
-------------------
 f
(1 row)

james=# select ad_group_member_p(1,system_administrator_group_id());
 ad_group_member_p 
-------------------
 f
(1 row)

buxs=# select ad_group_member_p(1,system_administrator_group_id());
 ad_group_member_p 
-------------------
 f
(1 row)

buxs=# select ad_group_member_p(3,system_administrator_group_id());
 ad_group_member_p 
-------------------
 f
(1 row)
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5: Response to can't access admin pages, but I am site-wide admin (response to 1)
Posted by Jerry Asher on 09/04/01 09:15 AM
Well that's good news.  I would have hated it if those selects returned a 't'.  So ignore james for now, and let's just go for the bux.  Assume that if you can fix that one, you can heal yourself later.

What is system_administrator_group_id() returning?  Why did you use the user_ids of 1 and 3?

What does "select * from user_group_map where user_id in (1,3);" return?

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6: Response to can't access admin pages, but I am site-wide admin (response to 1)
Posted by James Thornton on 09/04/01 09:58 PM
> What is system_administrator_group_id() returning? 
buxs=# select system_administrator_group_id() from dual;
 system_administrator_group_id 
-------------------------------
                              
(1 row)
> Why did you use the user_ids of 1 and 3? 
user_id 1: system account
user_id 2: anonymous
user_id 3: first real user added (me -- also an administrator)
> What does "select * from user_group_map where user_id in (1,3);" return? 
buxs=# select * from user_group_map where user_id in (1,3);
 group_id | user_id |     role      |   registration_date    | mapping_user | mapping_ip_address 
----------+---------+---------------+------------------------+--------------+--------------------
        1 |       1 | administrator | 2001-08-28 22:30:39-05 |            1 | 0.0.0.0
        1 |       3 | administrator | 2001-08-28 23:23:08-05 |            1 | 129.62.16.17
<snip other group ids>
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7: Response to can't access admin pages, but I am site-wide admin (response to 1)
Posted by Jerry Asher on 09/04/01 10:20 PM
It looks as though you have a problem in system_administrator_group_id().  Looking at its definition within www/doc/sql/user-groups.sql, I wonder what does "select * from administration_info" return?  (All of this appears to tell you what's broken, but not why or how it broke of course.)
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8: Response to can't access admin pages, but I am site-wide admin (response to 1)
Posted by James Thornton on 09/04/01 10:50 PM
I dropped the db (again), restored it, and it looks like everything is working (I hope).

The only thing I had done on both dbases last night was export them and run vacuum analyze -- until now, I had only restored one dbase so that couldn't have caused both to become corrupt. I had suspected that vacuum analyze caused my PostgreSQL problem too (old posting).

Has anyone else experienced stuff like this before? What was your solution?

Or, does anyone have another theory -- besides vacuum analyze corrupting the dbase?

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9: Postgres doesn't respond to calls from Web page until I hit reload (response to 1)
Posted by James Thornton on 09/04/01 11:23 PM
I am still experiencing one problem...

Sometimes stuff on a Web page that should have resulted from a dbase query is either not there or shows a "server error" (this happens on both OpenACS servers).

If I hit reload in the browser, then it correct itself. It appears that this happens after I kill and restart AOLserver.

Upgrading from PG 2.0 driver to 2.1 does not fix the problem.