#1 being appended to usernames in Confluence

Randy Erbacci

We're using LDAP for authentication in Confluence 5.9.5. Recently when contacted by a user for not having his usual permission, I see that there are two accounts associated to his name in the user directory. One of his account appears to be his normal username and the other one is his normal username but is appended  by a "#1". Any idea of how this happened and how to prevent it? BTW, I'm not an expert on LDAP. Thanks.

Shannon S

Hi Randy,

This can happen if your Unique User ID Attribute isn't set correctly. You can find this under General > Users & Security > User Directories. Open your LDAP setup and under User Schema Settings, you will find it.

Review Connecting to an LDAP Directory:

User Unique ID Attribute - The attribute used as a unique immutable identifier for user objects. This is used to track username changes and is optional. If this attribute is not set (or is set to an invalid value), user renames will not be detected — they will be interpreted as a user deletion then a new user addition.

This should normally point to a UUID value. Standards-compliant LDAP servers will implement this as 'entryUUID' according to RFC 4530. This setting exists because it is known under different names on some servers, e.g. 'objectGUID' in Microsoft Active Directory.

Let us know if you have any questions or trouble!

Kind Regards,
Shannon