21 October 2011, 3:59

Hi there,
For some reason Mahara (1.4) has been duplicating some users for no reason. Their student number is something like 10182829 but i have notice Mahara was been making duplicates i.e. 101828292 and 101828293 and so on. it just addes them as a new user and doesnt copy any of there added in information.
Every student number is unique so there should be no need for Mahara to add in a number at the end to show uniquness of that person.
Does any one know why this is happening or is it a bug?
We use a Mahoodle set up with mahara 1.9.8.
Thanks
John Kerr

22 October 2011, 2:34

Hello John,

Could you check in your config.php that

 $cfg->usersuniquebyusername = true;

is set.

This should avoid your poblem of users duplication.

To prevent this, you have also to force users to login through SSO (from Moodle I presume) and discard the login box from the Mahara home page.

Cheers,

-dajan

22 October 2011, 5:01

I'd really advise against doing this!

This setting is intended for administrators running multiple sites (moodle, mahara, etc) with one single authentication mechanisms for all sites. It opens up potential security issues if users are able to set or change their own usernames in Moodle.

22 October 2011, 5:12

Hi John,

It sounds like something has gone awry with your authentication mechanism. I assume that you're using the XMLRPC auth mechanism and this is set  up for one institution in Mahara.

Firstly I'd take a look at your web server's error logs. These will include any errors you're not seeing when the XMLRPC jump takes place and may point you in the direction of the cause of the issue.

I'd also advise trying to reset the authentication mechanisms on your Mahara. Make sure that you only have the XMLRPC authentication mechanism on your institution (no manual, ldap, etc for example), and try resetting all of the certificates.

If this still doesn't resolve your issue, I'd take a quick look at the database. It sounds like your users aren't being assigned to the correct authentication mechanism. Try a query like this:

select u.username, i.instancename, i.institution, i.authname, i.priority from usr u left join auth_instance i on i.id = u.authinstance;

You may want to limit this to specific users:

select u.username, i.instancename, i.institution, i.authname, i.priority from usr u left join auth_instance i on i.id = u.authinstance WHERE u.username IN ('userone', 'usertwo', 'userthree');

Or:

select u.username, i.instancename, i.institution, i.authname, i.priority from usr u left join auth_instance i on i.id = u.authinstance WHERE u.username LIKE '10182829%';

You're looking to see that the user is being created with the correct instance name, and institution.

Hope that this give you some pointers,

Andrew

24 October 2011, 9:10

Andrew,thanks for the information.I will try the database queries as you suggested and see where it takes me. Thanks for the posts and i will try and report back where the error lies once i have found it.Cheers john

30 September 2012, 9:19

My impression is that if you have sso with Moodle and export to portfolio in Moodle enabled, that it goes wrong if you export first, before you have ever been to Mahara.

Too busy now, but I'll try to prove this in a few weeks :-)