Is there a way to allow hook_cron to run with administrator privileges -- e.g a sort of sudo hook_cron() as it were?
This question is a follow up to my earlier question trying to diagnose why hook_cron() functions invoked by /drupal/cron.php run differently that the same functions invoked by /admin/reports/status/run-cron.
My particular function (call it foo_cron()) updates user profiles as part of its nightly duties. But, /drupal/cron.php apparently runs as an anonymous user. Anonymous users cannot modify user profile fields in this site, for obvious reasons, so this part of the script fails.
I know I can work around this by modifying profile_fields directly using SQL, but that feels like an ugly hack, and could be tough to maintain if I start doing this in multiple modules.
Is the a way, within the existing Drupal functions and framework, to make certain foo_cron() jobs run with privs that we normally only give administrators, such as updating profiles?
This particular site is running Drupal 6.1.3.