Strapi: 403 user-permission/init during application creation

[Cpaczek]

Describe the bug
Lacking permission to for initial admin account setup

Console Error http://localhost:1337/users-permissions/init 403 (Forbidden)

Steps to reproduce the behavior

Step 1
strapi new test-project --quickstart
Step 2
Navigate to localhost:1337/admin

See console error with 403 forbidden

Expected behavior
Should allow for regular initial setup.

Screenshots
If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem.

System
Versions:
Strapi: 3.0.0-beta.16.8
npm: 6.9.0
node: 10.16.1
database: sqllite
OS: windows 10

Additional context
Found multiple other issues but the none of the solved my problem. Found a potential work around but here but i don't seem to have a plugins folder or defaults.json.

[lauriejim]

Hello! It has been fixed in this PR.
It's release in beta.17 ;)
https://github.com/strapi/strapi/pull/4246

[mariusbolik]

Having the same Problem on beta.17.1.
Created a new Project with MySQL (no SSL).

Strapi: 3.0.0-beta.17.1
npm: 6.12.0
node: 10.16.3
database: MySQL
OS: macOS

[Cpaczek]

@mariusbolik the new update worked for me. I'm does it work if you use sqllite?

[derrickmehaffy]

What version of MySQL?

[mariusbolik]

What version of MySQL?

Server-Type: MySQL
Server-Connection: No SSL
Server-Version: 5.7.28 - MySQL Community Server (GPL)
Protocol-Version: 10
Char Set: cp1252 West European (latin1)

DB Dump: https://we.tl/t-HS8LgebxaQ

[mariusbolik]

@mariusbolik the new update worked for me. I'm does it work if you use sqllite?

If I use the --quickstart Option I have no problems. Also with beta.16.8 I had no Problems with SQLite. But I really need MySQL.

[mariusbolik]

Okay. Now I created a Project with the --quickstart Flag. Then I created an Account. After that I converted the SQLite File (data.db) to an MySQL File, imported it into my Database and changed the default DB Settings to my MySQL credentials. Now Strapi seems to work with MySQL. Very strange.

[derrickmehaffy]

@mariusbolik I'm guessing it's your db permissions, I just tested with a fresh project on MariaDB 10.4 and no issues:

[mariusbolik]

@derrickmehaffy can you tell me what happens if you use a remote database from a random hosting provider?
The strange thing ist that it's working after I imported the SQLite Dump into my MySQL Database.

[derrickmehaffy]

There isn't many that offer MySQL. But I did test with Digital Ocean managed with a DO droplet and it worked fine. Same for AWS

[derrickmehaffy]

Reopening as other users still reporting issues

[mariusbolik]

Some more Infos in this case:

• I had a fresh, external MySQL Database
• After I created a new strapi project, the tables were created in my DB
• I got a "403 Forbidden" Message in the console
• I only was able to see the loading spinner on /admin

Solution:

• I created a new project with the --quickstart flag
• Everything worked fine and I was able to create an admin user
• I searched for the data.db file in my project
• I converted the file into MySQL
• Imported it in my DB
• Everything works fine with MySQL

Next Strange thing:
After running strapi run build and strapi run start multiple times it seems to work with a fresh strapi installation and a fresh MySQL DB.
But I also got some errors that some modules couldn't be loaded. And also some bookshelf timeouts. Maybe it's because I'm on the train and I have a poor internet connection. Also the following error appeared very often:

Impossible to register the 'core_store' model. 
TimeoutError: Knex: Timeout acquiring a connection. The pool is probably full. Are you missing a .transacting(trx) call?`

Can't explain the behavior.

Is there any difference between using npm run start and strapi start?

[derrickmehaffy]

@mariusbolik I'm guessing its your connection. Databases are designed to be as low latency as possible, when you start messing with them over poor connections they start failing. Most have connection limits so if you create a connection, you time out, and reconnect you now have 2 connections. Most Databases (mysql) allow for a sleep timer before the connection is killed. So if you have very spotty internet you can start compounding those idle connections by a lot very quickly.

No there is no difference in running npm run start and strapi start the only change is where the command is run from. Npm uses the node_modules version of strapi, where as calling it directly uses the global install (based on your $PATH)

[derrickmehaffy]

Ideally you would want your database connection be to under 10ms for MySQL but it really prefers to be much lower

[mariusbolik]

It really seems to work better if I have an excellent internet connection. Especially when use Strapi with an external (remote) MySQL Database.

[derrickmehaffy]

There isn't really much Strapi can do to help you, I believe your problem is really related to your latency. If you need to do local development, it would probably be best to install MySQL locally

[fmaldonados]

@mariusbolik you can try adding this code to your database.json:
"options": { "pool": { "min": 0, "max": 10, "idleTimeoutMillis": 3000, "createTimeoutMillis": 3000, "acquireTimeoutMillis": 3000 } }

that help me with the connection timeout issue.

[derrickmehaffy]

@fmaldonados @mariusbolik @lorenries From what I can gather the issue here is in fact the latency between your strapi application and your database. If you are on MySQL or Postgres you can try using the settings that @fmaldonados provided or you can test using mine:

      "options": {
        "debug": false,
        "acquireConnectionTimeout": 100000,
        "pool": {
          "min": 0,
          "max": 50,
          "createTimeoutMillis": 30000,
          "acquireTimeoutMillis": 600000,
          "idleTimeoutMillis": 20000,
          "reapIntervalMillis": 20000,
          "createRetryIntervalMillis": 200
        }
      }

Add this to your database.json (under options, which I've included as part of it)

But realistically you are likely going to have issues in the future with performance due to the database latency. If you are working locally, then I suggest you install your database locally or run it in a docker container. If you are having issues with your host and the database then I would suggest you contact your host or find a new one. As "useful" as it is to run your DB over the internet, it really isn't a good idea. Most databases typically want to be as low latency as possible, when you run their connections over the internet (especially with something like SSL you are increasing that latency by quite a lot. Even inside the same cloud over their private LAN.

I have personally tested Digital Ocean and their managed databases and didn't see many issues. Likewise with AWS EC2 and their managed DB Hosting (same datacenter).

For now I'm marking this as closed as this is not an issue with Strapi but due to user environment.

[arnoldgamboa]

Reopening. This is not a latency issue. I've tested this within the same VPS and same 403 Forbiden issue is there when you access admin.

[slashvortal]

Any updates on this issue?
MySQL Server version: 5.7.27 ubuntu 0.18.04.1 no-ssl
Strapi 3.0.0-beta.17.5
DigitalOcean droplet

Happened after upgrading to 3.0.0-beta.17.5

[slashvortal]

@arnoldgamboa For some reasons, it was the MySQL db user privileges problem.
Unfortunately, I couldn't track the privileges changes when I granted ALL to the user while testing. But after granting ALL everything worked fine!.

[chrisd666]

Hi,
I am currently facing this issue on my Windows machine. Recently I tried creating a new project at work on a Ubuntu machine and it worked without any issues. Are there any fixes for this?

[yaoyonstudio]

got the same issue.
seems this issue only happen on windows.

[RaisinBread42]

Happening to me when running Strapi on a Windows Subsystem for Linux.

Tried:

• Initialized the Ubuntu subsystem with admin privileges.
• Run Strapi as root user (sudo npm start)

Host OS: Windows 10 Pro Version 1909, OS build 18363.535
Subsystem: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Strapi Version: 3.0.0-beta.18.3
Node Version: 13.5.0

[darvanen]

Same on docker:

Host OS: MacOS 10.14.6
Docker image: node:12
Strapi -v: 3.0.0-beta.18.3
Node -v: 12.13.1
db: mongodb-community 4.2.1

[darvanen]

... So if you're running into this and, like me, you removed all permissions from public users because the app is only meant for admin access... go back and enable 'init' on the users-permissions plugin for public users. /facepalm

[truongnguyen1912]

Following is working for me:

• Open table users-permissions_role
• Find record with "action" column = "init"
• Update role column from 1 to 2

That means Public user has ability to init the UserPermission plugin.

[santicros]

I had the same problem. I tried to install a clean version created with quickstart and switch to mysql or create a create-strapi-app with mysql from start and it didn't work.
The only thing that worked was changing what @truongnguyen1912 said!!

I first checked with SELECT:

SELECT * FROM `users-permissions_permission` WHERE action = 'init';

And then the UPDATE:

UPDATE `users-permissions_permission` SET role = 2 WHERE action = 'init';

[vskrch]

Thanks man it worked!

[petre2dor]

similar problem and solution here. I had to query users-permissions_role and found that "action" = "init" had id 4, then I ran:

UPDATE users-permissions_permission SET role = 4 WHERE action = 'init';

[sandokanelcojo]

@derrickmehaffy

There is some issue clearly going when populating MySQL databases for the first time.

This shouldn't be closed.
Can you please re-open it so it gets the attention it deserves?

Thanks.

[derrickmehaffy]

@derrickmehaffy

There is some issue clearly going when populating MySQL databases for the first time.

This shouldn't be closed.
Can you please re-open it so it gets the attention it deserves?

Thanks.

@sandokanelcojo

Can you open a new issue so we can test fresh with proper reproductive steps

[shamim-42]

I had the same problem. I tried to install a clean version created with quickstart and switch to mysql or create a create-strapi-app with mysql from start and it didn't work.
The only thing that worked was changing what @truongnguyen1912 said!!

I first checked with SELECT:

SELECT * FROM `users-permissions_permission` WHERE action = 'init';

And then the UPDATE:

UPDATE `users-permissions_permission` SET role = 2 WHERE action = 'init';

Very very very thanks !!!!!!!!! It works here in your way.

[mariusbolik]

I had the same problem. I tried to install a clean version created with quickstart and switch to mysql or create a create-strapi-app with mysql from start and it didn't work.
The only thing that worked was changing what @truongnguyen1912 said!!

I first checked with SELECT:

SELECT * FROM `users-permissions_permission` WHERE action = 'init';

And then the UPDATE:

UPDATE `users-permissions_permission` SET role = 2 WHERE action = 'init';

Using the little hack makes it possible to init Strapi. But I can't authenticate users:

I also can't Login on the Web interface. Only with admin users.
If I use SQLite (--quickstart) or Postgres everything works fine!!!

There seems to be a major problem with User Permissions when using MySQL.

[lauriejim]

Do you have a way to reproduce?

[derrickmehaffy]

@lauriejim this appears at random but I think it relates to a low resource database, slow database, or just overall lack of resources. As far as I can tell Strapi tries to send database requests and they either timeout or fail to set all the values.

[lauriejim]

Hello! Thank you @mariusbolik for sharing database credentials to let me reproduce.
Can you send me the resources of your database, please.
RAM, CPU, ...
Thank you.

[mariusbolik]

@lauriejim Thank you for helping. I'M using the first Server of this list: https://www.hetzner.com/managed-server (MC40)

Databas Info:

Version: mysql  Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.7.29, for Linux (x86_64) using  EditLine wrapper
Charset: utf8mb4_unicode_ci

Memory Info:

CPU Info

I hope I did it right. Please tell me if you need more Information :)

[mariusbolik]

@lauriejim Something I forget to say:
If I init Strapi with a MariaDB Database, then export all data and import it to my MySQL Database, everything works fine.
But if I init Strapi directly with a MySQL Database, the above mentioned error appears.

[lorenries]

Adding another anecdotal report, when I reported this in https://github.com/strapi/strapi/issues/4286, we were setting Strapi up on a DB in an xlarge AWS RDS instance (32gb of memory) with all of our resources running in a virtual private cloud.

I doubt there's any way latency and memory could have been factors!

[bluehawk27]

Same here running in an aws ecs cluster. The ecs cluster and RDS are in the same VPC. Traffic is NOT flowing over the internet so latency more than likely not a factor.

[alexandrebodin]

@bluehawk27 This issue has become really big and it is hard to see what is going on. can you share the exact error messages you get and your info (strapi version, db, db version) so we can reproduce your usecase too.

[bluehawk27]

@alexandrebodin i saw 403 on a GET request to users-permissions/init. Using Node 12 in a Docker container rds is running mysql 8.0 strapi version "3.0.0-beta.20"

[alexandrebodin]

Ok thank you ! We made a fix in beta.20.1 that should prevent this from happening.

i'm going to close this issue. If user are using a version prior to beta.20.1 please upgrade and tell us if this still happens.