Item6011: No notifications sent in a protected web

For a client with a restricted access twiki I cannot make WebNotify mails to work. In the twiki all webs are protected (cannot be viewed by TWikiGuest). And so no email are sent out.

The MailerContrib topics says: A user identified by an email address will only be sent change notifications if the topic they are asubscribed to is readable by guest users.

Actually this seems to be valid for all users, whether they have written their email address in WebNotify or not.

For a test I have made the Sandbox web readable by TWikiGuest, and then I do see mails sent out.

This is the output from mailnotify:

~/cgi-bin/twiki$ perl ../../twiki/tools/mailnotify
Processing Main
---+ Abonneer je op wijzigingen

Je ontvangt elke dag een overzicht van wijzigingen op deze twiki.




%COMMENT{type="subscribe"}%
   * ArthurClemens: *

%FLIP%
%INCLUDE{"%TWIKIWEB%.WebChangesAlert"}%

__%MAKETEXT{"Related topics:"}%__ %TWIKIWEB%.WebChangesAlert, %MAINWEB%.%WIKIUSERSTOPIC%, %TWIKIWEB%.TWikiRegistration

%FLOP%
        Last notification was at 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z
Processing Sandbox
%MAKETEXT{"This is a subscription service to be automatically notified by e-mail when topics change in this [_1] web. This is a convenient service, so you do not have to come back and check all the time if something has changed. To subscribe, please add a bullet with your [_2] in alphabetical order to this list:" args="*<nop>%WEB%*,%SYSTEMWEB%.WikiName"}%

   * Main.TWikiGuest - example@your.company
   * ArthurClemens: *

%INCLUDE{"%SYSTEMWEB%.WebChangesAlert"}%

__%MAKETEXT{"Related topics:"}%__ %SYSTEMWEB%.WebChangesAlert, %SYSTEMWEB%.TWikiRegistration
        Last notification was at 2008-09-21T20:35:32Z
Processing TWiki
        TWiki has no subscribers
Processing Trash
        Trash has no subscribers
        0 change notifications from Main
        0 change notifications from Sandbox

It is a real pity this does not work, and my clients sees the value of their TWiki reduced because there is no way to get notified by changes (RSS does not work either in a protected web).

-- TWiki:Main/ArthurClemens - 21 Sep 2008

this seems pretty urgent to me.

-- WillNorris - 03 Jun 2009

This report has been raised in September last year.

MailerContrib has been through many changes since.

Will you elevated this to urgent a few days ago. Have you confirmed that this bug is still present?

I have all webs at Motorola blocked for access for guests. You have to be authenticated to view pages. But out WebNotify works fine when people add their WikiName to WebNotify. And this even worked on TWiki 4.2.

-- KennethLavrsen - 12 Jun 2009

old bug and no feedback

smells like a red herring

probably an old bug resolved a year ago

-- KennethLavrsen - 17 Jul 2009

no action

---

To reproduce the error / bug you have to open the preferences of any web. Just put anything (a group or user) to ALLOWWEBVIEW.

After that the email adresses enterd in WebNotify of the same web, does not work any longer.

It seems that it is not possible to get change notification of a protected web.

I understand, that RSS-Feed for a proteced web is only working when logged in. But for the cron job it should be OK, not to care about the ALLOWWEBVIEW. Or am I wrong?

-- Mr. Dotter - 29 Sep 2010

There is a solution, I got it in the chat. Here it comes:

[23:44] <@gac410> There was a bug in 1.0.9 where the shell scripts were running under a guest id instead of AdminUser
[23:49] <@gac410> The bug in 1.0.9   is that Foswiki:Engine:CLI.pm uses $req->remoteUser( $Foswiki::cfg{SuperAdminGroup} ); to set the admin USER.
[23:50] <@gac410> Obviously SuperAdminGroup is not a userid.   The correct statement is:  +        $req->remoteUser( $Foswiki::cfg{AdminUserWikiName} );
[23:53] <foswiki_irc9> So yust add to bei cronjob: -user AdminUser
[23:54] <@gac410> Yes,  that should fix it I believe.    If not,  you can patch the line in Engine/CLI.pm

So, I fixed the Engine/CLI.pm, and everything got fine. I am so happy

-- Mr. Dotter - 30 Sep 2010

i have updated the documentation to include the -user parameter. i have updated 1.0, 1.1, and trunk. MailerContrib needs to be re-released (version on MailerContrib appears to have been released from the 1.0 branch).

also need to follow up with a fix to the documentation for the statistics script and a patch for 1.0's CLI.pm

-- WillNorris - 30 Sep 2010

Next release is 1.1.0.

So this bug item should have been marked Major and 1.1.0. Not patch and n/a. Good that I do not trust you suckers and double check. Otherwise this item would not have been listed in the 1.1.0 release note

-- KennethLavrsen - 03 Oct 2010

I have a short question: Is this bug meant that everybody listed in the WebNotify gets an email even if he has no read access to the topic?

I don't think this is a bug but rather a feature. Otherwise I don't need read permissions because everybody who has write access to WebNotify can read my topics by adding his name to the list. For me this sounds like a serious security issue.

-- HolgerHain - 04 Oct 2010