Using 6.8.8, and just trying to make some special groups which use the results of an sql query to determine whether the user belongs to that group.

I've got a simple mysql database that I'm using which basically has two fields - Login (which has the username of the user) and another field User which holds either 0 or 1 depending on whether they should have access or not.

The group is set up with a simple sql query that is:

SELECT 1 FROM users
where Login = "^@;"
      AND User = 1

Cache external groups is set to 1hr.

Now.. here's the wierd part.  If one of these users who should have access logs in and tries to access either a page that is restricted (to this group), or even if the page has a GroupText macro which tests whether they belong to the group, then it fails the first time they do so.  If they refresh the page or try again - it works and they have access - but it seems to forget again after an hour.

I'm baffled why it's failing the first time - but it's broken the way it's currently working and I have no idea how to fix it (or even if it's actually a bug and not something I'm doing)

Surely some of you are using this functionality to determine whether users belong to certain groups?

If anyone can help I'd really appreciate it.

Jesse 

After much debugging I've found the bit of code that doesn't seem to work correctly when looking up groups in an external DB.

In Grouping.pm there's a function isInGroup() - this has a section which looks up an external database if specified - this is where it actually gets tested.

If the lookup is successful, and the result is 1 then it has a bit of code:

$session{isInGroup}{$uid}{$gid} = 1 unless ($session{config}{disableCache}); 

This assignment does not seem to work - as later when it does a call:

return 1 if ($session{isInGroup}{$uid}{$gid});

the value returned by $session{isInGroup}{$uid}{$gid} is blank.

This causes it to fail the first time - though it has added the user to the group already, so next time it works.. until the group assignment expires and it happens again.

I don't know why that assignment fails - I'm an amateur at perl (though I write code in C/C++ daily) - but I do know how to debug code and I littered the code with trace statements in order to figure this out.  I've fixed it by using my own variable which I set to 1 if the lookup is successful (and it defaults to 0 if not) and I've changed that return statement to use my variable)

I'll post this up on sourceforge as a bugfix - hopefully someone with better perl skills will understand why that assignment doesn't work - but in the meantime my hack fixes the issue we were experiencing here.

Cheers,

Jesse 

No - there's no mention of disableCache in my config file.

I also tried it early in my debugging by removing that unless clause - even changing it to:

$session{isInGroup}{$uid}{$gid} = 1;

didn't work.

I have no idea why - as I said, my perl knowledge is limited.

Instead, I just ignored it for this clause and added a line below it with:

$returnvalue = 1; 

and changed the return 1 if ... call to

return $returnvalue;

Oh.. and I declared my $returnvalue = 0; at the top of that section also.

This solved the problem for me.