[rt-users] missing peoples problem

[Jerrad Pierce]

> I suspect that the ticket history for any tickets with these users as
> requestors will error out. This has happened to me before. I can show you
> how to fix it, but I will need some info.
Nope, we actually have several tickets in that state, where part way through
the display of transaction history RT croaks. This ticket displays fine, though
it (now) has "no requestor," and I cannot find the requestor via the search
form on the modify people page, nor the admin user search form. However the
original requesting user exists, and can be loaded in the modify user page if
the correct id is specified in the URL, or via Shredder's search results.

> First, get the UserID for each of these missing Requestors. Once we have
> those, we will have to run a series of SQL commands to find out just who is
> missing and what tickets are affected, including closed tickets. I hope you
> are familiar with SQL. What Database are you using? We're on Oracle,
> but the sequence of events should still be the same.
It might be worth posting this Shredder recovery as a how-to to the wiki.

Additional details: mysqlcheck reports no errors, and there is nothing of
consequence in the logs. We recently upgraded from 3.8.1 to 3.8.6, and
I did perform the database upgrades. I'm not sure if the problem existed
before the switch, but it seems doubtful given the frequency of the activity
(spreadsheet dumping) that lead me to uncover this.

None of our local customizations seem likely candidates to be interfering
with this, especially on such a limited basis:

local/lib/RT/Transaction_Local.pm -- recognize VCF is text
local/lib/RT/CustomFields_Local.pm -- simplified code, switch sort order
local/lib/RT/Interface/Email/Filter/SpamAssassin.pm
local/lib/RT/Interface/Email_Local.pm -- tag parser with Q in ticket ID
local/lib/RT/Interface/Web_Local.pm -- long life cookies
local/lib/RT/Shredder/Plugin/Users.pm -- search on other fields: real, name
local/lib/RT/Shredder/Plugin/Attachments.pm -- minimum file size