Need some help with _gain_sudo_session

[EdgeSync]

Hey all,

I'm writing a small script to periodically audit our Jira users. Nothing fancy - just pull a list of active users, check their email in our AD, and if they are terminated there, make their accounts inactive.

I'm having some real problems understanding how to use _gain_sudo_session - because it seems it's not documented anywhere.
I checked in the docs here Read The Docs: JIRA but there is no mention of _gain_sudo_session.

I've read through some of the bug reports that mention it - but they weren't any help.

Python 3.8
jira==3.4.1
JIRA Version: 8.20 Data Center / Also have a Docker Image that is Jira Server 9.5 which I use for testing on my local system.

Here's an example of what I'm trying to do:

from jira import JIRA
class Jira:
    def __init__(self):
        self.user = "mr.edgesync@someexample.com"
        self.token = "blahblahblahsomelongtokenblahblahblah"
        self.jira = JIRA(token_auth=(self.token),
                         options={"server": "https://jira.someexample.com"})
    
    def set_user_inactive(self, email):
        self.jira._gain_sudo_session({}, "/")
        self.jira.deactivate_user(username=email)

def main():
    j = Jira()
    j.set_user_inactive("test_user@someexample.com")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

When I run that code on JIRA 8.20 it causes an application error. When I run it against Server 9.5 - nothing happens.
On the error it spits back a massive HTML response, but the basics of the error are:

Cause

Referer URL: Unknown

java.lang.NullPointerException

This might be a known bug with this version, and is patched in newer version - Would explain why this isn't throwing any errors in version 9.5

I also tried Basic Auth (Username + Password) instead of token, which had the same result (Error in 8.2, and nothing happens in 9.5)

I think I just don't understand the _gain_sudo_session function well enough. Can anyone help me understand what I need to do?

Small update; while testing with jirashell - actually i discovered it was set_user_inactive that was causing the JIRA instance to error out
not the _gain_sudo_session function. My bad :)