Special characters in user ID and passwords

Special characters in user ID and passwords

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When a person signs up as a user or when an administrator enrolls a user, they complete the user information form. On this form, do not enter characters that might not be supported. Regardless of what characters you are able to enter on the user information form, user ID and passwords are limited to the valid characters described in this section. You can specify other characters in the First Name and Last Name fields. Under normal circumstances a valid user ID and password can contain the following characters:

Lower case characters {a-z}
Upper case characters {A-Z}
Numbers {0-9}
Exclamation point {!}
Open parenthesis {(}
Close parenthesis {)}
Dash {-}
Period {.}
Question mark {?}
Open bracket {[}
Close bracket {]}
Underscore {_}
Grave accent {`}
Tilde {~}

These are all ASCII characters. Non-ASCII characters are not allowed for username or password.
(UNIX only) If a fully qualified user ID contains a space. For example...

cn=wpsadmin,cn=users,l=SharedLDAP,c=US,ou= Lotus ,o=Software Group,dc=ibm,dc=com

...place the fully qualified user ID in the properties file or into a parent properties file instead of as a flag on the command line. For example...

Create a parent properties file called mysecurity.properties
Enter the fully qualified user ID
Run the task...
./ConfigEngine.sh task_name -DparentProperties=/opt/mysecurity.properties

Required fields and supported characters on the user information form...

User information form fields Valid characters Characters not supported
User ID Lower case characters {a-z}
Upper case characters {A-Z}
Numbers {0-9}
Exclamation point {!}
Open parenthesis {(}
Close parenthesis {)}
Dash {-}
Period {.}
Question mark {?}
Open bracket {[}
Close bracket {]}
Underscore {_}
Grave accent {`}
Tilde {~}
Non-ASCII characters are not allowed.
The user ID cannot contain any whitespace and cannot be longer than 200 characters.
If you enter any unsupported characters during the installation, you will receive an error message that states which character is invalid. For example, "The special character [@] was found in the administrative user ID field. Enter the administrative user ID again."
You will receive a different error message if you enter any unsupported characters when creating users through the Manage users and groups portlet.
Password
Confirm password Lower case characters {a-z}
Upper case characters {A-Z}
Numbers {0-9}
Exclamation point {!}
Open parenthesis {(}
Close parenthesis {)}
Dash {-}
Period {.}
Question mark {?}
Open bracket {[}
Close bracket {]}
Underscore {_}
Grave accent {`}
Tilde {~}
Diacritics, such as the umlaut, and DBCS characters
The password cannot contain any whitespace and cannot be longer than 128 characters.
Login will fail if the password contains any unsupported characters, including DBCS characters. This will happen even if a user is successfully enrolled using a password containing DBCS characters.
If you enter any unsupported characters during the installation, you will receive an error message that states which character is invalid. For example, "The special character [@] was found in the password field. Enter the password again."
First Name All characters n/a
Last Name All characters n/a

The above characters are true if the user.UNIQUEID.charset parameter is set to ascii. If set to unicode, the standard Java Letter definition is used and all characters that are recognized as letter or digit by Java are allowed by default. Modify the following parameters:

Add supported userid character values to the user.UNIQUEID.extra_chars key.
Add supported password character values to the password.extra_chars key.
Add supported, special character values to the group.extra key.
Add special short group ID attributes to the group.RDN key.
Change the maximum character length of the group name on the group.RDN.max key.
Change the minimum character length of the group name on the group.RDN.min key.
Change the charset (either ascii or unicode) on the user.UNIQUEID.charset key.

Parent topic
Planning for WebSphere Portal

User information form fields	Valid characters	Characters not supported
User ID	Lower case characters {a-z} Upper case characters {A-Z} Numbers {0-9} Exclamation point {!} Open parenthesis {(} Close parenthesis {)} Dash {-} Period {.} Question mark {?} Open bracket {[} Close bracket {]} Underscore {_} Grave accent {`} Tilde {~}	Non-ASCII characters are not allowed. The user ID cannot contain any whitespace and cannot be longer than 200 characters. If you enter any unsupported characters during the installation, you will receive an error message that states which character is invalid. For example, "The special character [@] was found in the administrative user ID field. Enter the administrative user ID again." You will receive a different error message if you enter any unsupported characters when creating users through the Manage users and groups portlet.
Password Confirm password	Lower case characters {a-z} Upper case characters {A-Z} Numbers {0-9} Exclamation point {!} Open parenthesis {(} Close parenthesis {)} Dash {-} Period {.} Question mark {?} Open bracket {[} Close bracket {]} Underscore {_} Grave accent {`} Tilde {~}	Diacritics, such as the umlaut, and DBCS characters The password cannot contain any whitespace and cannot be longer than 128 characters. Login will fail if the password contains any unsupported characters, including DBCS characters. This will happen even if a user is successfully enrolled using a password containing DBCS characters. If you enter any unsupported characters during the installation, you will receive an error message that states which character is invalid. For example, "The special character [@] was found in the password field. Enter the password again."
First Name	All characters	n/a
Last Name	All characters	n/a