Sorry to revive an old thread but I am experiencing the same issue as Ramesh reports, using version 2.4
I am using the "internal" option for password management
../moodle/auth/db/cli/sync_users.php is being run under the root user via crontab every 5 minutes
../moodle/admin/cli/cron.php is being run under the root user every 15 minutes
I see all the rows from the external database being created in the _user table as expected - from this thread I believe cron.php should be sending out an email with the temporary password for the user to log in with?
In user_preferences I can see auth_forcepasswordchange = 1 & create_password = 1 but don't receive an email when cron.php runs
I tried outputting the output of cron.php to a file in case there were errors (attached)
I have seen mention of issues where an email address is used multiple times: there is one row in the external database and a corresponding _user row which created a duplicate email address in the _user table could that be anything to do with the failure?
Although the Authentication plugin didn't seem to trigger an email, I believe the mail server is correctly configured - manually authing sends a registration email
Also for a user where External authentication hasn't worked - the forgotten password form still generates a link, that link that seems to work, however the user/password that it sends on doesn't allow me to log in
The _user rows are not suspended or deleted, but do have empty PASSWORD even after running cron.php
Is there anything else I ought to check relating to user setup?