What causes "user with id %d not found" in gotify/server?

Verify the user ID exists before calling InitializeForUserID

user with id %d not found

Error message

user with id %d not found

What it means

InitializeForUserID looks up the user by ID and, when the storage returns no user (nil) and no error, returns 'user with id %d not found'. It guards the per-user plugin initialization against stale or invalid user IDs.

Source

Thrown at plugin/manager.go:270

		return fmt.Errorf("plugin with module path %s is present at least twice", modulePath)
	}
	m.plugins[modulePath] = compatPlugin
	return nil
}

// InitializeForUserID initializes all plugin instances for a given user.
func (m *Manager) InitializeForUserID(userID uint) error {
	m.mutex.Lock()
	defer m.mutex.Unlock()

	user, err := m.db.GetUserByID(userID)
	if err != nil {
		return err
	}
	if user != nil {
		return m.initializeForUser(*user)
	}
	return fmt.Errorf("user with id %d not found", userID)
}

func (m *Manager) initializeForUser(user model.User) error {
	userCtx := compat.UserContext{
		ID:    user.ID,
		Name:  user.Name,
		Admin: user.Admin,
	}

	for _, p := range m.plugins {
		if err := m.initializeSingleUserPlugin(userCtx, p); err != nil {
			return err
		}
	}

	apps, err := m.db.GetApplicationsByUser(user.ID)
	if err != nil {
		return err

View on GitHub (pinned to 14bfc25627)

Solutions

Verify the user ID exists before calling InitializeForUserID
Handle the error by skipping plugin initialization for the missing user
Clean up plugin enable/disable config entries when deleting users

Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Validate before calling

u, err := userStorage.GetUserByID(userID)
if err != nil || u == nil {
    log.Printf("user %d does not exist; skipping plugin init", userID)
    return
}

Try / catch

if err := mgr.InitializeForUserID(uid); err != nil {
    if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "not found") {
        log.Printf("stale user id %d, skipping", uid)
        return nil
    }
    return err
}

Prevention

Delete plugin config entries when removing users
Re-check user existence before deferred initialization tasks
Use foreign keys/cascades between users and plugin settings

When it happens

Trigger: Calling InitializeForUserID with a userID that does not exist in the user storage — typically a deleted user, or a user ID from a stale session/token.

Common situations: Race where a user is deleted while their plugin sessions are being initialized, or tests/bots passing synthetic user IDs.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Not found" and "does not exist" errors: why "Task not found", "No such folder", and "Can't find" fire when a lookup comes back empty — this error's family across 14 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of gotify/server@14bfc25627 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/bce084aedcaf24b0. Report an issue: GitHub.