Duplicate aliases cause login problems.
I had a user create an account and for some reason, when I looked in uedit, it was set to inactive. This was a low number in the 30's so this would have been 6+ years ago so no idea why it happened.
The user created a new account with a different name but same handle. They were unable to login, however, even when they eventually supplied the correct password.
Invalid or duplicate user real name or alias: 'username'
So I don't know if they were able to create this 2nd user with the same alias before a bug was fixed years ago or if it's still something that needs to be looked at.
Also, maybe the login module can ignore inactive users when trying to match username/password combinations for login.
Going through the log a bit more, it does look like it stopped him trying to create a new user so maybe it's just an artifact from the past. Thought I'd mention it anyway.