routes/group.js's add/removeMember never called User.clearCache(), unlike
the isServiceAccount handling in routes/user.js (which does this
deliberately, with a comment explaining exactly why). isServiceAccount is
derived at User.get() time from app_sso_service_account membership and
cached for 5 minutes -- so adding or removing a user from ANY group via
this route left group-derived state (isServiceAccount, and by extension
anything else that reads memberOf off a cached User) stale for up to 5
minutes.
In production this manifested as a real user's account appearing to
"vanish": users.ejs's People tab filters out anything with
isServiceAccount truthy, so once that user's membership in
app_sso_service_account changed, they'd disappear from the tab anyone
actually looks at for up to 5 minutes -- looking exactly like data loss,
though the account was never touched. Found by investigating a live "lost
users" report: the account had isServiceAccount: 'yes' and was in fact
still fully present, just hidden.
This does not explain how the account came to be a member of
app_sso_service_account in the first place (unresolved -- possibly a
manual/accidental group-membership change via the Groups UI, which has no
guardrail against adding a real person to what's meant to be a marker
group for non-person accounts). It does fix a real correctness gap: any
admin group-membership change now takes effect immediately instead of on
a timer.
Verified against a real LDAP+Redis harness: the new test fails on the
unfixed code (stale isServiceAccount immediately after the PUT) and
passes with the fix. Full suite: 189/191 passing (2 pre-existing skips).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
wmantly
