Ansible Create Users and Groups

Question: Several new developers and DevOps engineers just joined the xFusionCorp industries. They have been assigned the Nautilus project, and as per the onboarding process, we need to create user accounts for new joinees on at least one of the app servers in Stratos DC. We also need to create groups and make new users members of those groups. We need to accomplish this task using Ansible. Below you can find more information about the task.

There is already an inventory file ~/playbooks/inventory on jump host.

On jump host itself there is a list of users in ~/playbooks/data/users.yml file and there are two groups — admins and developers —that have list of different users. Create a playbook ~/playbooks/add_users.yml on jump host to perform the following tasks on app server 3 in Stratos DC.

a. Add all users given in the users.yml file on app server 3.

b. Also add developers and admins groups on the same server.

c. As per the list given in the users.yml file, make each user member of the respective group they are listed under.

d. Make sure home directory for all of the users under developers group is /var/www (not the default i.e /var/www/{USER}). Users under admins group should use the default home directory (i.e /home/devid for user devid).

e. Set password GyQkFRVNr3 for all of the users under developers group and LQfKeWWxWD for of the users under admins group. Make sure to use the password given in the ~/playbooks/secrets/vault.txt file as Ansible vault password to encrypt the original password strings. You can use ~/playbooks/secrets/vault.txt file as a vault secret file while running the playbook (make necessary changes in ~/playbooks/ansible.cfg file).

f. All users under admins group must be added as sudo users. To do so, simply make them member of the wheel group as well.

Note: Validation will try to run the playbook using command ansible-playbook -i inventory add_users.yml so please make sure playbook works this way, without passing any extra arguments.

Please Note:-  Perform the below commands based on your question server,  user name & other details that might differ. So please read the task carefully before executing it. All the Best 👍

Solution:  

1. Check  inventory, vault & user file as per your task

thor@jump_host ~$ cd ~/playbooks/ thor@jump_host ~/playbooks$ ll total 16 -rw-r--r-- 1 thor thor   36 Sep  1 06:48 ansible.cfg drwxr-xr-x 2 thor thor 4096 Sep  1 06:27 data -rw-r--r-- 1 thor thor  237 Sep  1 06:48 inventory drwxr-xr-x 2 thor thor 4096 Sep  1 06:49 secrets thor@jump_host ~/playbooks$ cat inventory stapp01 ansible_host=172.16.238.10 ansible_ssh_pass=Ir0nM@n ansible_user=tony stapp02 ansible_host=172.16.238.11 ansible_ssh_pass=Am3ric@ ansible_user=steve stapp03 ansible_host=172.16.238.12 ansible_ssh_pass=BigGr33n ansible_user=banner thor@jump_host ~/playbooks$ thor@jump_host ~/playbooks$ cat data/users.yml admins:   - rob   - david   - joy   developers:   - tim   - ray   - jim   - markthor@jump_host ~/playbooks$ cat secrets/vault.txt P@ss3or432 thor@jump_host ~/playbooks$

2. Kindly add the vault in the ansible configuration file 

thor@jump_host ~/playbooks$ vi ansible.cfg thor@jump_host ~/playbooks$ cat ansible.cfg [defaults] host_key_checking = False vault_password_file = /home/thor/playbooks/secrets/vault.txt thor@jump_host ~/playbooks$

3. Create the playbook name given in the task

Copy / pull from git lab  below link

https://gitlab.com/nb-tech-support/devops/-/blob/master/Ansible/

4.  Refer to the below video for further configuration & validation 

Happy Learning!!!!

Apart from this if you need more clarity,  I have made a  tutorial video on this, please go through and share your comments. Like and share the knowledge