Just change the value of users.user_name. If desired, run a large query to change all instances of the old username in revisions.rev_user_text to the new value, but it's not essential.

Rob Church

On 23/12/05, Uwe Baumbach U.Baumbach@web.de wrote:

Hi,

since this is a very important topic for us I repeat my question(s) here.

P.S.:

If these questions are too stupid: (How) Can I do a full text search of the whole mailing list archive?

=================================================== Is there a official of half-official way to rename a user _name_ ?!

Because: We have to use an external user database with existing (about) 2000 users. With the first logon at our wiki a user record will be created with the name taken from the external table (using AuthPlugin.php)

Only now we realized that there were "bad" user names, e.g. "X0456" (formerly only a logon name - in MW a apparent name) or "kilroy" (first letter in lower case). Those user names are already in use with a lot of creatings/changes of articles.

Furthermore in this external database a UserID (number) is used - and copied into the MW user table too.

Now we have two situations that claim renaming username: a) The user wants to do so (because of senseless user name). In that case we could suppress this feature for the future in our external application, but if would be nice to have it. b) Admins want to do so (because of user names with underscores in the name or first letter in lower case already in the MW user table...)

The way _I_ see is: changing all xyz_user_text fields in all MW tables and rename/redirect the user page article.

1. Would that be stable?
2. Is there a way to do so transparently from the MW surface (for admins only)?
3. The function getCanonicalName in AuthPlugin.php can change the user name gotten from external.

Is this change persistant in that way that a new created user record would get the "munged" user name?

-- Thanks.

Uwe(Baumbach) U.Baumbach@web.de

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the way I handle this is when the user does not exist in my external database, but exists in the wiki, I scramble their password, so they won't be able to login to Wiki interface, but they will not lose any of their pages. I also disabled the email password part in localsettings.php so they won't be able to get a new password, so that way the external database controls the usernames/logins in the wiki.

-----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org]On Behalf Of Uwe Baumbach Sent: Friday, December 23, 2005 4:41 AM To: mediawiki-l@wikimedia.org Subject: [Mediawiki-l] create,rename a user - external user data base (2nd attempt)

Hi,

since this is a very important topic for us I repeat my question(s) here.

P.S.:

If these questions are too stupid: (How) Can I do a full text search of the whole mailing list archive?

=================================================== Is there a official of half-official way to rename a user _name_ ?!

Because: We have to use an external user database with existing (about) 2000 users. With the first logon at our wiki a user record will be created with the name taken from the external table (using AuthPlugin.php)

Only now we realized that there were "bad" user names, e.g. "X0456" (formerly only a logon name - in MW a apparent name) or "kilroy" (first letter in lower case). Those user names are already in use with a lot of creatings/changes of articles.

Furthermore in this external database a UserID (number) is used - and copied into the MW user table too.

Now we have two situations that claim renaming username: a) The user wants to do so (because of senseless user name). In that case we could suppress this feature for the future in our external application, but if would be nice to have it. b) Admins want to do so (because of user names with underscores in the name or first letter in lower case already in the MW user table...)

The way _I_ see is: changing all xyz_user_text fields in all MW tables and rename/redirect the user page article.

1. Would that be stable? 2. Is there a way to do so transparently from the MW surface (for admins only)? 3. The function getCanonicalName in AuthPlugin.php can change the user name gotten from external. Is this change persistant in that way that a new created user record would get the "munged" user name?

--  Thanks.

Uwe (Baumbach) U.Baumbach@web.de

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