puppetlabs/puppet · error · Puppet::Util::Windows::Error

Failed to get user name

Error message

Failed to get user name

What it means

Raised on Windows when the Win32 GetUserNameW call fails inside Puppet::Util::Windows::User.current_user_name, which resolves the running process's user (for logging, ACL, and ownership decisions). It raises Puppet::Util::Windows::Error, appending the GetLastError details to the message.

Source

Thrown at lib/puppet/util/windows/adsi.rb:513

      expires && expires < Time.now
    rescue WIN32OLERuntimeError => e
      # This OLE error code indicates the property can't be found in the cache
      raise e unless e.message =~ /8000500D/m

      false
    end

    # UNLEN from lmcons.h - https://stackoverflow.com/a/2155176
    MAX_USERNAME_LENGTH = 256
    def self.current_user_name
      user_name = ''.dup
      max_length = MAX_USERNAME_LENGTH + 1 # NULL terminated
      FFI::MemoryPointer.new(max_length * 2) do |buffer| # wide string
        FFI::MemoryPointer.new(:dword, 1) do |buffer_size|
          buffer_size.write_dword(max_length) # length in TCHARs

          if GetUserNameW(buffer, buffer_size) == FFI::WIN32_FALSE
            raise Puppet::Util::Windows::Error, _("Failed to get user name")
          end

          # buffer_size includes trailing NULL
          user_name = buffer.read_wide_string(buffer_size.read_dword - 1)
        end
      end

      user_name
    end

    # https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/secext/ne-secext-extended_name_format
    NameUnknown           = 0
    NameFullyQualifiedDN  = 1
    NameSamCompatible     = 2
    NameDisplay           = 3
    NameUniqueId          = 6
    NameCanonical         = 7
    NameUserPrincipal     = 8

View on GitHub (pinned to e227c27540)

Solutions

1. Retry after a reboot; verify basic health with `whoami` from the same context.
2. Inspect the System event log and memory pressure; report upstream with the win32 error code from the message if persistent.

begin
  Puppet::Util::Windows::User.current_user_name
rescue Puppet::Util::Windows::Error
  ENV['USERNAME'] # best-effort fallback
end

When it happens

Trigger: Calling current_user_name in a context where the process/token cannot report its user — effectively only under system-level failure such as security-subsystem breakage or severe resource exhaustion.

Common situations: Almost never observed on healthy machines; shows up in traces alongside other Win32 failures during incident debugging.

Related errors

• Failed to get computer name
• FormatMessageW could not format code %{code}
• RegisterEventSourceW failed to open Windows eventlog
• ReportEventW failed to report event to Windows eventlog
• FormatMessageW failed to allocate buffer for code %{code}

AI-assisted analysis of puppetlabs/puppet@e227c27540 (2026-08-21). Data as JSON: /api/errors/b8ee81210cb2cde6. Report an issue: GitHub.