06 February 2017, 20:02

Hi Kristina and all,

We have a Mahoodle (Moodle 3.1+ and Mahara 15.04.7) and have had it since 2011. Our main userbase in Moodle logs in via LDAP authentication from a central user database. Occasionally, a student changes username in the central user database (we have been unable to convince our IT of the silliness of this occurring, but to no avail) which means they will create a new account in Moodle and lose access to the old account unless we merg the two (put the new username on the old account. However, what happens then in Mahara is that the user with the new username creates a new Mahara account and loses access to their old material and I haven't been able to merge the new Mahara account with the old. How should I go about it? I have tried changing the "Username for external authentication" on the account, as well as chnaging the username of the account in the database. Nothing seems to work.

Rgrds,
Paul.

21 February 2017, 9:13

Hello Paul,

I would have thought that your procedure works, Paul. Typically, when I'm in that situation I do the same:

1. Delete the new user account (if the student hasn't done any work in it yet, otherwise just set it to internal auth for the time being).
2. Go to the old user account and change the "Username for external auth (aka remote username). Changing the internal username doesn't matter if you have MNet set up because Mahara only checks the remote username. I do that entirely on the user interface though as there are a couple of places in the database that you would need to change otherwise, but most importantly, I don't have access to it anyway. ;-) It's usually safer to change the remote username via the interface.
3. Student logs into Moodle with the new username and jumps to Mahara and ends up in their original account.
4. If the user already made changes in their new account, I export the portfolio and import it into the new account (being logged in as the user and go to Portfolio -> Import) making sure that I don't change the contact info but ignore that.

Can your users also log in via LDAP in Mahara or just via Moodle?

Cheers

Kristina

21 March 2017, 2:38

Hi Kristina,

I apologise for the late reply and I thank you for the instructions. It turned out the two students who complained about being unable to reach their previous work had not been entirely clear about what was wrong (MNET authentication was not working, it turned out), so I had been looking in the wrong direction. :-/

Rgrds,
Paul.

23 March 2017, 10:30

Hello Paul,

Getting good bug reports can be difficult. ;-) I hope you could sort it all out.

Cheers

Kristina