Ansible role for creating user accounts

This Ansible role allows for easy and painless adding of users on Linux/Unix/POSIX systems. No rocket science involved.

Why not ansible.builtin.user?

• If you want to provide a password, it has to be hashed. This role takes care of it.
• If you just want to add a user to an additional group (e.g. docker or audio), you must not forget to set append: true. This role makes it by default.
• Sets some useful defaults, e.g. generating an ed25519 SSH key
• Setting an empty instead of a disabled password requires an extra parameter allow_no_password: true

Requirements

• python3 with the crypt module (part of standard library)

Usage

Check out defaults/main.yml for all possible configuration options and their defaults.

Examples

Create a user

- name: Create new user for service
  include_role:
    name: users
  vars:
    username: srvuser

A user without a password will have it set to *, so disabled. Useful for users who you will log into via sudo or SSH.

Create multiple users

In your playbook:

- name: Set up machines
  remote_user: root
  tasks:
    - name: Setup users
      include_role:
        name: users
      loop: "{{ users }}"
      vars:
        username: "{{ item.user }}"
        password: "{{ item.pass | default('*') }}"
        # feel free to add other variables here as well

and in your host_vars file:

users:
  - user: srvuser
    pass: safepassword
  # password will be disabled
  - user: controller

License

Apache-2.0, Copyright Max Mehl