Superuser with Staff status removed cannot access Admin menu

[markkuleinio]

Deployment Type

Self-hosted

NetBox Version

v4.0-beta1

Python Version

3.11

Steps to Reproduce

1. Go to users and open an admin user ("admin" in this example) who has Staff and Superuser status
2. See the description for Staff status: "Designates whether the user can log into this admin site."
3. Clear the Staff status for "admin" user and save the settings
4. Login with the "admin" user
5. See the main menu

Expected Behavior

The main menu has Admin section with all the options to manage users etc. because the user is a Superuser.

Observed Behavior

The "admin" user (with Superuser status) does not have the Admin menu shown.

[markkuleinio]

#15089 has some comments/discussion about the future of Staff status

[markkuleinio]

Also note that when the "admin" user logs in (after removing the Staff status) it shows "User" under the username, not "Superuser":

Maybe related to this same confusion about the user access level?

[jeremystretch]

I don't think it would be fair to treat this as a bug. All of the items under the "admin" navigation menu declare staff_only=True, with the intent that they be displayed only for users with is_staff=True. This applies both to the new views introduced in v4.0 as well as those that already exist in v3.7. Granted, the logic is a bit murky, especially with the Django admin UI now disabled by default in NetBox v4.0, but the behavior is intentional.

@markkuleinio could you please resubmit this as a feature request proposing the removal of staff_only=True from these menu items?

(Now that we have a custom User model [see #12795], I'd be in favor of dropping the is_staff designation entirely, but that will need to wait until we completely remove the Django admin UI from NetBox.)