Username Special Characters Bug?

[shawnb61]

I haven't been able to register the 2nd user on my environments.  One is a mature 2.0.15 (patched from 1.1) and one is a fresh 2.0.15 install.   These environments behave consistently, and consider FredrikÖ and FredrikO duplicates. 

This is consistent with what GigaWatt describes. 

The problem isn't that they aren't treated uniquely...  The problem is you shouldn't have been able to add the 2nd user at all.  This is consistent with what Lex describes.

So...   The real question is how can you even register the 2nd account to begin with?   Are these longstanding user accounts?   Or are you adding new ones today on a 2.0.15 system?   

If the behavior is consistent today (meaning you can add both FredrikÖ and FredrikO at this time) I suspect a DB collation issue somewhere.

You can try running this utility to see if any inconsistencies jump out:
https://github.com/sbulen/sjrbTools/blob/master/SMF_UTF8_Diag.php

It will dump your SMF charset & language settings, as well as all your DB charset & collation settings. 

[Looking]

Shawnb61, FredrikÖ and FredrikO already exist in the membership. Its only when I tried to change the password of one I noticed that it would never work despite saying it updated the password successfully.

I will try that utility later, thanks for the link.

I believe you may end up in this situation if you originally were running 1.1.19 / 2.0.6 or older version of SMF, and had since upgraded

I believe there was an upgrade at some point, so are you saying the issue would carry over even to the latest version?

[Kindred]

Basically -- the users were apparently created before SMF implemented the protection that prevents the same/similar character in usernames.

Your issue can not be recreated on any NEW user, and new username change or on any system that was built after the fix went in, because the base condition (having those two usernames) won't ever happen in those cases.

[shawnb61]

If SMF allowed it for a period, there will be some users out there that are "near dupes".

It sounds like there are issues maintaining those.

[Illori]

i believe there was a "bug" fix to prevent the similar usernames, after that it should not be possible to have this happen. might need to rename the accounts affected and try again. i am not sure which version fixed this issue.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

I think think it was introduced in 2.0.7 (1.1.20) but I'm not 100% sure on that. Anyways, there might be a legit "bug" in SMF caused by this. If there are older usernames that fall under the limitations, such as we see in this topic, I would think SMf should allow them to function normally or give a more descriptive error and force the user to change their name.

[Illori]

I would think SMf should allow them to function normally or give a more descriptive error and force the user to change their name.

users cannot change their username, only the admin can do that function so we would need to consider this if we are to change this.

[Looking]

Well the 'cure' so far has only been to change the Username as later fixes does not address members currently in the system.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

Yes, for now that is the best way to handle it. Though this also makes it impossible for the member to login using their original username - but if you are changing their password, then logically changing the login wouldn't be an issue either.

[Looking]

The main problem is when you have hundreds of members with similar characters in their name. Some people may want to login but will just give up rather than contact you for help.

I may have to write a script to change such occurrences and Email the member in question unless someone wants to save me some time.

[Kindred]

the thing is... writing a script to change the username would also have to take into account and change the password hash

[GigaWatt]

The main problem is when you have hundreds of members with similar characters in their name.

Is this really an every day scenario? I mean... I've never encountered it. Not that I've got millions of members, but still.

I may have to write a script to change such occurrences and Email the member in question unless someone wants to save me some time.

You could just add a new entry in News . "Some users may experience problems logging in. If you experience such issues, please contact the administrator."