Ansible Role: Users and Groups

Creates users and groups for Debian/Ubuntu Linux.

Requirements

None.

Role Variables

Available variables are listed below, along with default values (see defaults/main.yml).

To create a user with all defaults, and who's primary group is the same as their username:

server_users:
  - name: "ash"
    password: "imnotarobot"

Groups

There is no separate groups variable. They are instead part of the server_users variable.

To specify the primary group name and alternate groups:

server_users:
  - name: "ash"
    password: "imnotarobot"
    group: "primarygroupname"
    groups:
      - "anothergroup"
      - "more-groups-here"

SSH Keys

By default, all users created by this role are generated a new SSH key:

server_users_ssh_key_generate: yes
server_users_ssh_key_bits: "4096"

You can override this per user too:

server_users:
  - name: "ash"
    password: "imnotarobot"
    ssh_key_generate: yes
    ssh_key_bits: "4096"

SSH Authorized keys

Sometimes you want to also set the authorized keys so people can log in using public keys instead of passwords. To set that for all users:

server_users_auth_keys: "{{ contents_of_ssh_authorized_keys }}"

Where the contents of the variable is the same as the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys files.

You can also override this per user:

server_users:
  - name: "ash"
    password: "imnotarobot"
    auth_keys: "{{ contents_of_ssh_authorized_keys }}"

Default shell

The default shell is bash. To can override this for all users:

server_users_shell: "/bin/bash"

You can also specify a shell for a particular user. This overrides the above default:

server_users:
  - name: "ash"
    password: "imnotarobot"
    shell: "/bin/zsh"

By default, the role does not log task actions for security reasons. To enable logging:

server_users_no_log: true

Ansible configurations

This role also distributes an .ansible.cfg file to each user's home directory. This allows you to override the default role_path and no_cows settings:

server_users_ansible_role_path:  "~/.ansible/roles"
server_users_ansible_nocows: 1
server_users_ansible_log: false
server_users_ansible_log_path: '~/ansible.log'

Again, you can do this per user:

server_users:
  - name: "ash"
    password: "imnotarobot"
    ansible_role_path: "/etc/ansible/roles"
    ansible_nocows: 0
    ansible_log: true
    ansible_log_path: "/home/ash/logs/ansible.log"

Removing and deleting users

You can also remove users by using the state variable:

server_users:
  - name: "ash"
    state: absent

If you wish to also delete their home directory, use remove:

server_users:
  - name: "ash"
    state: absent
    remove: yes

Dependencies

None.

Example Playbook

server_users:
  - name: "ash"
    password: "imnotarobot"
    group: "wy"
    groups:
      - "scidiv"
  - name: "kane"
    password: "ihateeggs"
    shell: "/bin/ksh"
    ssh_key_generate: no

License

GPL 3.0.

Author Information

This role was created in 2017 by socketwench.