This may be a database-specific problem but I have verified it with both Postgres 7.3.4 and MySQL. Confirmed in uPortal 2.3.3 and 2.3.4, probably in earlier releases as well.

If the user's name contains a single-quote (eg "O'Brien") the user's layout fails to save. It would appear that an error occurs when the "userName" attribute is saved in the UP_SS_USER_PARM table.

Steps to reproduce:
1) create a user using ant md5passwd.
2) update the user's record in UP_PERSON_DIR table to include a first and last
name. Put an single quote in the last name, eg. "O'Brien".
3) Log in to uPortal with the user.
4) Go to preferences and modify the layout (add a tab).
5) Save preferences.
6) Logout.
7) Log in again with the same user. The layout changes were not saved.

There is no error reported in the portal logs - it would appear that the database error is being caught and thrown away. However, database transaction logs will show something similar to the following:

postgres.log:Sep 19 11:55:56 kil-udb-1 postgres[22352]: [4172] ERROR: parser:
parse error at or near "Brien" at character 125

I corrected this problem by stripping single quotes out of the userName when it gets stored in UserInstance.processUserLayoutParameters():

// DAL remove single quotes in name field RW 21-Sep-2004
// original code: themePrefs.putParameterValue("userName", userName);
            themePrefs.putParameterValue("userName", userName.replaceAll
("'", ""));
// DAL end

There is probably a better way that escapes the single-quotes properly, but I didn't have a lot of time to fiddle with it.

-Robin