Access denied! [error] Drush command terminated abnormally due to an unrecoverable error.

[trepmag]

Hello, I have an instance which on a particular hosting drush return "Access denied!":

garvey@marcus.com:~/web/dev/docroot$ drush -d
 [preflight] Config paths: /home/garvey/web/dev/vendor/drush/drush/drush.yml
 [preflight] Alias paths: /home/garvey/web/dev/docroot/drush/sites,/home/garvey/web/dev/drush/sites
 [preflight] Commandfile search paths: /home/garvey/web/dev/vendor/drush/drush/src
 [bootstrap] Bootstrap to max [0.14 sec, 7.4 MB]
 [debug] Trying to bootstrap as far as we can [0.14 sec, 7.4 MB]
 [bootstrap] Drush bootstrap phase: bootstrapDrupalRoot() [0.15 sec, 7.54 MB]
 [bootstrap] Change working directory to /home/garvey/web/dev/docroot [0.15 sec, 7.54 MB]
 [bootstrap] Initialized Drupal 8.4.5 root directory at /home/garvey/web/dev/docroot [0.15 sec, 7.54 MB]
 [bootstrap] Drush bootstrap phase: bootstrapDrupalSite() [0.16 sec, 8.04 MB]
 [bootstrap] Initialized Drupal site default at sites/default [0.16 sec, 8.04 MB]
 [bootstrap] Drush bootstrap phase: bootstrapDrupalConfiguration() [0.17 sec, 8.04 MB]
Access denied! [error]  Drush command terminated abnormally due to an unrecoverable error. [0.17 sec, 8.53 MB]

While it fails through drush the instance run successfully through apache?!...

Also, I could not identify any files or directory that the user running drush cannot read ?!...

Any tips on how I could try to identify what is wrong?

• drush version: Drush Commandline Tool 9.1.0
• drupal version: 8.4.5

[weitzman]

I would review your settings.php in Drupal. It is probably assuming web requests. You can add a block like

if (PHP_SAPI !== 'cli' && $some_access_check) {
  exit('access denied')
}

[trepmag]

Oh yes, it was that; I had an http authentification setup which wasn't correctly skip when in php cli context! Sorry for the disturbance and thank you very much for the tip!!!

[gitressa]

Thanks, this helped. I had added an exit in settings.php as part of forcing HTTPS, and I guess internally Drupal is not using HTTPS, giving me a "Drush command terminated abnormally due to an unrecoverable error" when executing for example drush st from within the Drupal installation directory. Interestingly, it worked if I used an alias (drush @alias st), perhaps because the base_url was defined in my drush alias?

Anyways, adding PHP_SAPI !== 'cli' in my settings.php did the trick:

// Force https
if ( (!array_key_exists('HTTPS', $_SERVER)) && (PHP_SAPI !== 'cli') ) {
  header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');
  header('Location: https://example.org'. $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
  exit();
}

[jasonyarrington]

That one helped me out too. I was testing for a redirect and forgot to check that it was for the command line.