I am having problems renaming a user back to the old username (I imported from phpBB and had to rename some users, e.g. Möp to Moep). I get a 500 error when I try to rename the user, also when reloading the user has still the name without the umlaut. Any idea? The unicode settings are enabled, the umlauts are allowed and also external system avatars enabled is enabled.

It looks like the discourse-migratepassword plugin isn’t compatible with Unicode usernames. cc @michaeld Yes, disabling the plugin should fix this issue for you. [image] Roi: What else is handled by discourse-migratepassword that it needs to be active after the import from phpBB? It isn’t useful during the import, only after the import as it allows your users to login with their old password.

You’ll need to look at the logs and see what’s there. You might see in /logs or you might need to look at /var/discourse/shared/standalone/log/rails/production.log (I think it’s log and not logs).

Ah thank you. I had no idea if and where there are logfiles. Now I know. :slight_smile: Found this: Started PUT "/users/moep/preferences/username" for xxxx:c5:9f0d:4c00:xxxx:e179:xxxx:xxxx at 2022-11-23 15:53:52 +0000 Processing by UsersController#username as */* Parameters: {"new_username"=>"Möp", "username"=>"moep"} Completed 500 Internal Server Error in 338ms (ActiveRecord: 0.0ms | Allocations: 137204) Encoding::CompatibilityError (incompatible character encodings: ASCII-8BIT and UTF-8) app/models/user.rb:1806:in `username_validator' app/services/username_changer.rb:35:in `change' app/services/username_changer.rb:13:in `change' app/controllers/users_controller.rb:202:in `username' There is more, but I thought it might be enough. If now, I can provide more. Btw, I tried more than one username and had similar problems.

@pfaffman can you see the cause in my logs why I get the 500 error? :slight_smile:

It didn’t like the characters in the username. I don’t know why.

I just tested renaming a user from “moep” to “Möp” and it worked. What version of Discourse are you using? Is this a standard install? Is there some kind of reverse proxy in front of your Discourse? Which browser are you using? What’s the value of the allowed_unicode_username_characters setting? Does renaming in the rails console work?./launcher enter app rails c user = User.find_by_username("moep") new_username = "Möp" UsernameChanger.change(user, new_username, Discourse.system_user)

[image] Gerhard Schlager: What version of Discourse are you using? Latest. Which should be 2.9.0.beta12 at the moment. [image] Gerhard Schlager: Is this a standard install? Yes. Just renamed the container name as I plan to run more than one discourse instance. But at the moment it is only one running. [image] Gerhard Schlager: Is there some kind of reverse proxy in front of your Discourse? Apache 2.4 [image] Gerhard Schlager: Which browser are you using? Chrome, Brave. [image] Gerhard Schlager: What’s the value of the allowed_unicode_username_characters setting? [äöüßÄÖÜẞ] [image] Gerhard Schlager: Does renaming in the rails console work It does not work either: => "Wägi" [6] pry(main)> UsernameChanger.change(user, new_username, Discourse.system_user) Encoding::CompatibilityError: incompatible character encodings: ASCII-8BIT and UTF-8 from /var/www/discourse/plugins/discourse-migratepassword/plugin.rb:78:in `+' Here I tried “Waegi” to “Wägi”. What I noticed: I use a new template version for the container which holds the following information: env: LC_ALL: en_US.UTF-8 LANG: en_US.UTF-8 LANGUAGE: en_US.UTF-8 DISCOURSE_DEFAULT_LOCALE: de In the old template (2019 or so) there only was: env: LANG: en_US.UTF-8 DISCOURSE_DEFAULT_LOCALE: de Does this maybe have to do with the problem? And are these the right settings for a Discourse installation with main language German? Oh and I noticed now that the error is thrown by discourse-migratepassword - which was the reason why I renamed the users before importing everything from phpBB to Discourse. Would it be useful to disable discourse-migratepassword, rename the users and then enable it again? What else is handled by discourse-migratepassword that it needs to be active after the import from phpBB?

[image] Gerhard Schlager: Yes, disabling the plugin should fix this issue for you. … It isn’t useful during the import, only after the import as it allows your users to login with their old password. Okay thank you. So I would disable it, rename the users and then enable it again right away. Thanks again! :slight_smile:

[image] Gerhard Schlager: It isn’t useful during the import, only after the import as it allows your users to login with their old password. Disabling and then renaming the users worked. Thank you again. :slight_smile: I was wondering: Can the users with umlauts now logon with their old phhBB password as discourse-migratepassword seems to have this unicode problem?

I’m pretty sure that the first time they log in their password is saved as a Discourse password, so you don’t need it anymore. It sounds like anyone who is going to log in with the imported password has already.

I am not able to reproduce this issue. Same settings for unicode ans allowed characters, I even made a user with the same username and renamed it to Möp. There should be something else - that I am not aware of - for this issue to surface?

Issue with renaming user with unicode characters

Product Support

Roi November 24, 2022, 12:03pm 9

Okay thank you. So I would disable it, rename the users and then enable it again right away. Thanks again!

Topic		Replies	Views
Unicode usernames and group names Announcements new-feature	33	9563	February 25, 2025
Recent migration to discourse caused usernames to change! Product Support	11	392	October 7, 2024
Username with non english chars Product Support	1	1155	July 31, 2015
:cn: Discourse supports Chinese usernames \| Discourse 支持中文用户名 Administrators chinese-translation	1	1199	September 12, 2023
Exclamation mark and special characters in usernames Migration	25	4926	April 30, 2024

Issue with renaming user with unicode characters

Related topics