Who is user 0?

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pengrus
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Who is user 0?

Post by pengrus »

Hello,

I was trying to prune those inactive users, and got this error message:
Could not find group information for this user: "0"
Could anyone tell me who is this user 0? Can I delete it? I went to member profile page and type in 0, and could not find it.

Thanks a lot!
espicom
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Re: Who is user 0?

Post by espicom »

There is no user zero in phpBB.
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pengrus
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Re: Who is user 0?

Post by pengrus »

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for your reply. But I do get the above error code. What is the best way to check this user 0? How can I avoid this error?
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stevemaury
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Re: Who is user 0?

Post by stevemaury »

Is there in fact a user 0 in the users table of your database? You can check this using phpMyAdmin or similar tool in your host's CPanel.
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Re: Who is user 0?

Post by espicom »

What are you using to "prune" users? That might be the key to figuring out how to fix this. The error message you gave does not appear in phpBB v2.0.22.
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pengrus
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Re: Who is user 0?

Post by pengrus »

I guess that message means the user's username is 0. So I did a search, I did not find any user name with 0, but there is one user with username of blank and userid of 0. And it is registered the first day the board was set up five years ago. Could this be it? Should I delete it? Is it safe to delete it?

And the function I used is called "Prune Users" for phpbb by Niels Chr. Denmark.

Thank you!
espicom
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Re: Who is user 0?

Post by espicom »

I'd suggest you ask where "Prune Users" came from, because they would know what would cause this error. Sorry.
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Mike Greathouse
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Re: Who is user 0?

Post by Mike Greathouse »

User 0 is Anonymous and is set up automatically when the forum is created.
It is automatically applied to any "Guests" that visit your board until they register or sign in.
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ric323
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Re: Who is user 0?

Post by ric323 »

Mike Greathouse wrote:User 0 is Anonymous and is set up automatically when the forum is created.
It is automatically applied to any "Guests" that visit your board until they register or sign in.
This is incorrect!
As espicom already stated, there is no user#0 in phpBB. The anonymous user is # -1. All valid user numbers start at 2.
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Mike Greathouse
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Re: Who is user 0?

Post by Mike Greathouse »

Well, I have two phpBB3 forums running and in the mysql user database of both is a user 0 named Anonymous which was created at setup. Do a search on this and you'll find another thread that confirms this information.
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Re: Who is user 0?

Post by Mike Greathouse »

This may be a difference in the initial setup between phpBB2 and phpBB3.
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karlsemple
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Re: Who is user 0?

Post by karlsemple »

Mike Greathouse wrote:This may be a difference in the initial setup between phpBB2 and phpBB3.

The anonymous user in phpBB2 has the user_id of -1 in phpBB3 the anonymous user has the user_id of 1
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pengrus
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Re: Who is user 0?

Post by pengrus »

Thanks for your further information on this user 0 issue.

To clarify, I have the following users:


userid -1, Anonymous
userid 0, blank username
userid 2, admin



So for my case, apparently the userid 0 caused the problem, my question is, is it safe to delete this userid 0?

Thanks,
Sean
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karlsemple
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Re: Who is user 0?

Post by karlsemple »

pengrus wrote:Thanks for your further information on this user 0 issue.

To clarify, I have the following users:


userid -1, Anonymous
userid 0, blank username
userid 2, admin



So for my case, apparently the userid 0 caused the problem, my question is, is it safe to delete this userid 0?

Thanks,
Sean

Backup the database and then try, I would assume so as that user is not a special user id in phpBB2
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pengrus
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Re: Who is user 0?

Post by pengrus »

Thank you. I deleted this userid 0, it gave me a mysql syntax error, but this user record was indeed deleted. And I tried Prune users again, everything works fine now.

Thanks a lot for your kind help in this issue.
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