Chapter 7. Managing user accounts using Ansible playbooks

PDF

You can manage users in IdM using Ansible playbooks. After presenting the user life cycle, this chapter describes how to use Ansible playbooks for the following operations:

Ensuring the presence of a single user listed directly in the YML file.
Ensuring the presence of multiple users listed directly in the YML file.
Ensuring the presence of multiple users listed in a JSON file that is referenced from the YML file.
Ensuring the absence of users listed directly in the YML file.

7.1. User life cycle

Identity Management (IdM) supports three user account states:

Stage users are not allowed to authenticate. This is an initial state. Some of the user account properties required for active users cannot be set, for example, group membership.
Active users are allowed to authenticate. All required user account properties must be set in this state.
Preserved users are former active users that are considered inactive and cannot authenticate to IdM. Preserved users retain most of the account properties they had as active users, but they are not part of any user groups.

You can delete user entries permanently from the IdM database.

Important

Deleted user accounts cannot be restored. When you delete a user account, all the information associated with the account is permanently lost.

A new administrator can only be created by a user with administrator rights, such as the default admin user. If you accidentally delete all administrator accounts, the Directory Manager must create a new administrator manually in the Directory Server.

Warning

Do not delete the admin user. As admin is a pre-defined user required by IdM, this operation causes problems with certain commands. If you want to define and use an alternative admin user, disable the pre-defined admin user with ipa user-disable admin after you granted admin permissions to at least one different user.

Warning

Do not add local users to IdM. The Name Service Switch (NSS) always resolves IdM users and groups before resolving local users and groups. This means that, for example, IdM group membership does not work for local users.

7.2. Ensuring the presence of an IdM user using an Ansible playbook

The following procedure describes ensuring the presence of a user in IdM using an Ansible playbook.

Prerequisites

You know the IdM admin password.
You have configured your Ansible control node to meet the following requirements:
- You are using Ansible version 2.14 or later.
- You have installed the ansible-freeipa package on the Ansible controller.
- The example assumes that in the ~/MyPlaybooks/ directory, you have created an Ansible inventory file with the fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) of the IdM server.
- The example assumes that the secret.yml Ansible vault stores your ipaadmin_password.
The target node, that is the node on which the ansible-freeipa module is executed, is part of the IdM domain as an IdM client, server or replica.

Procedure

Create an inventory file, for example inventory.file, and define ipaserver in it:
```
[ipaserver]
server.idm.example.com
```
Create an Ansible playbook file with the data of the user whose presence in IdM you want to ensure. To simplify this step, you can copy and modify the example in the /usr/share/doc/ansible-freeipa/playbooks/user/add-user.yml file. For example, to create user named idm_user and add Password123 as the user password:
```
---
- name: Playbook to handle users
  hosts: ipaserver

  vars_files:
  - /home/user_name/MyPlaybooks/secret.yml
  tasks:
  - name: Create user idm_user
    ipauser:
      ipaadmin_password: "{{ ipaadmin_password }}"
      name: idm_user
      first: Alice
      last: Acme
      uid: 1000111
      gid: 10011
      phone: "+555123457"
      email: idm_user@acme.com
      passwordexpiration: "2023-01-19 23:59:59"
      password: "Password123"
      update_password: on_create
```
You must use the following options to add a user:
- name: the login name
- first: the first name string
- last: the last name string
For the full list of available user options, see the /usr/share/doc/ansible-freeipa/README-user.md Markdown file.
Note
If you use the update_password: on_create option, Ansible only creates the user password when it creates the user. If the user is already created with a password, Ansible does not generate a new password.

Run the playbook:

$ ansible-playbook --vault-password-file=password_file -v -i path_to_inventory_directory/inventory.file path_to_playbooks_directory/add-IdM-user.yml

Verification

You can verify if the new user account exists in IdM by using the ipa user-show command:
1. Log into ipaserver as admin:
```
$ ssh admin@server.idm.example.com
Password:
[admin@server /]$
```
2. Request a Kerberos ticket for admin:
```
$ kinit admin
Password for admin@IDM.EXAMPLE.COM:
```
3. Request information about idm_user:
```
$ ipa user-show idm_user
  User login: idm_user
  First name: Alice
  Last name: Acme
  ....
```
The user named idm_user is present in IdM.

7.3. Ensuring the presence of multiple IdM users using Ansible playbooks

The following procedure describes ensuring the presence of multiple users in IdM using an Ansible playbook.

Prerequisites

You know the IdM admin password.
You have configured your Ansible control node to meet the following requirements:
- You are using Ansible version 2.14 or later.
- You have installed the ansible-freeipa package on the Ansible controller.
- The example assumes that in the ~/MyPlaybooks/ directory, you have created an Ansible inventory file with the fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) of the IdM server.
- The example assumes that the secret.yml Ansible vault stores your ipaadmin_password.
The target node, that is the node on which the ansible-freeipa module is executed, is part of the IdM domain as an IdM client, server or replica.

Procedure

Create an inventory file, for example inventory.file, and define ipaserver in it:
```
[ipaserver]
server.idm.example.com
```

Create an Ansible playbook file with the data of the users whose presence you want to ensure in IdM. To simplify this step, you can copy and modify the example in the /usr/share/doc/ansible-freeipa/playbooks/user/ensure-users-present.yml file. For example, to create users idm_user_1, idm_user_2, and idm_user_3, and add Password123 as the password of idm_user_1:

---
- name: Playbook to handle users
  hosts: ipaserver

  vars_files:
  - /home/user_name/MyPlaybooks/secret.yml
  tasks:
  - name: Create user idm_users
    ipauser:
      ipaadmin_password: "{{ ipaadmin_password }}"
      users:
      - name: idm_user_1
        first: Alice
        last: Acme
        uid: 10001
        gid: 10011
        phone: "+555123457"
        email: idm_user@acme.com
        passwordexpiration: "2023-01-19 23:59:59"
        password: "Password123"
      - name: idm_user_2
        first: Bob
        last: Acme
        uid: 100011
        gid: 10011
      - name: idm_user_3
        first: Eve
        last: Acme
        uid: 1000111
        gid: 10011

Note

If you do not specify the update_password: on_create option, Ansible re-sets the user password every time the playbook is run: if the user has changed the password since the last time the playbook was run, Ansible re-sets password.

Run the playbook:

$ ansible-playbook --vault-password-file=password_file -v -i path_to_inventory_directory/inventory.file path_to_playbooks_directory/add-users.yml

Verification

You can verify if the user account exists in IdM by using the ipa user-show command:
1. Log into ipaserver as administrator:
```
$ ssh administrator@server.idm.example.com
Password:
[admin@server /]$
```
2. Display information about idm_user_1:
```
$ ipa user-show idm_user_1
  User login: idm_user_1
  First name: Alice
  Last name: Acme
  Password: True
  ....
```
The user named idm_user_1 is present in IdM.

7.4. Ensuring the presence of multiple IdM users from a JSON file using Ansible playbooks

The following procedure describes how you can ensure the presence of multiple users in IdM using an Ansible playbook. The users are stored in a JSON file.

Prerequisites

You know the IdM admin password.
You have configured your Ansible control node to meet the following requirements:
- You are using Ansible version 2.14 or later.
- You have installed the ansible-freeipa package on the Ansible controller.
- The example assumes that in the ~/MyPlaybooks/ directory, you have created an Ansible inventory file with the fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) of the IdM server.
- The example assumes that the secret.yml Ansible vault stores your ipaadmin_password.
The target node, that is the node on which the ansible-freeipa module is executed, is part of the IdM domain as an IdM client, server or replica.

Procedure

Create an inventory file, for example inventory.file, and define ipaserver in it:
```
[ipaserver]
server.idm.example.com
```

Create an Ansible playbook file with the necessary tasks. Reference the JSON file with the data of the users whose presence you want to ensure. To simplify this step, you can copy and modify the example in the /usr/share/doc/ansible-freeipa/ensure-users-present-ymlfile.yml file:

---
- name: Ensure users' presence
  hosts: ipaserver

  vars_files:
  - /home/user_name/MyPlaybooks/secret.yml
  tasks:
  - name: Include users.json
    include_vars:
      file: users.json

  - name: Users present
    ipauser:
      ipaadmin_password: "{{ ipaadmin_password }}"
      users: "{{ users }}"

Create the users.json file, and add the IdM users into it. To simplify this step, you can copy and modify the example in the /usr/share/doc/ansible-freeipa/playbooks/user/users.json file. For example, to create users idm_user_1, idm_user_2, and idm_user_3, and add Password123 as the password of idm_user_1:
```
{
  "users": [
   {
    "name": "idm_user_1",
    "first": "Alice",
    "last": "Acme",
    "password": "Password123"
   },
   {
    "name": "idm_user_2",
    "first": "Bob",
    "last": "Acme"
   },
   {
    "name": "idm_user_3",
    "first": "Eve",
    "last": "Acme"
   }
  ]
}
```

Run the Ansible playbook. Specify the playbook file, the file storing the password protecting the secret.yml file, and the inventory file:

$ ansible-playbook --vault-password-file=password_file -v -i path_to_inventory_directory/inventory.file path_to_playbooks_directory/ensure-users-present-jsonfile.yml

Verification

You can verify if the user accounts are present in IdM using the ipa user-show command:
1. Log into ipaserver as administrator:
```
$ ssh administrator@server.idm.example.com
Password:
[admin@server /]$
```
2. Display information about idm_user_1:
```
$ ipa user-show idm_user_1
  User login: idm_user_1
  First name: Alice
  Last name: Acme
  Password: True
  ....
```
The user named idm_user_1 is present in IdM.

7.5. Ensuring the absence of users using Ansible playbooks

The following procedure describes how you can use an Ansible playbook to ensure that specific users are absent from IdM.

Prerequisites

You know the IdM admin password.
You have configured your Ansible control node to meet the following requirements:
- You are using Ansible version 2.14 or later.
- You have installed the ansible-freeipa package on the Ansible controller.
- The example assumes that in the ~/MyPlaybooks/ directory, you have created an Ansible inventory file with the fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) of the IdM server.
- The example assumes that the secret.yml Ansible vault stores your ipaadmin_password.
The target node, that is the node on which the ansible-freeipa module is executed, is part of the IdM domain as an IdM client, server or replica.

Procedure

Create an inventory file, for example inventory.file, and define ipaserver in it:
```
[ipaserver]
server.idm.example.com
```

Create an Ansible playbook file with the users whose absence from IdM you want to ensure. To simplify this step, you can copy and modify the example in the /usr/share/doc/ansible-freeipa/playbooks/user/ensure-users-present.yml file. For example, to delete users idm_user_1, idm_user_2, and idm_user_3:

---
- name: Playbook to handle users
  hosts: ipaserver

  vars_files:
  - /home/user_name/MyPlaybooks/secret.yml
  tasks:
  - name: Delete users idm_user_1, idm_user_2, idm_user_3
    ipauser:
      ipaadmin_password: "{{ ipaadmin_password }}"
      users:
      - name: idm_user_1
      - name: idm_user_2
      - name: idm_user_3
      state: absent

Run the Ansible playbook. Specify the playbook file, the file storing the password protecting the secret.yml file, and the inventory file:

$ ansible-playbook --vault-password-file=password_file -v -i path_to_inventory_directory/inventory.file path_to_playbooks_directory/delete-users.yml

Verification

You can verify that the user accounts do not exist in IdM by using the ipa user-show command:

Log into ipaserver as administrator:

$ ssh administrator@server.idm.example.com
Password:
[admin@server /]$

Request information about idm_user_1:
```
$ ipa user-show idm_user_1
ipa: ERROR: idm_user_1: user not found
```
The user named idm_user_1 does not exist in IdM.

7.6. Additional resources

See the README-user.md Markdown file in the /usr/share/doc/ansible-freeipa/ directory.
See sample Ansible playbooks in the /usr/share/doc/ansible-freeipa/playbooks/user directory.

Chapter 7. Managing user accounts using Ansible playbooks

7.1. User life cycle

7.2. Ensuring the presence of an IdM user using an Ansible playbook

7.3. Ensuring the presence of multiple IdM users using Ansible playbooks

7.4. Ensuring the presence of multiple IdM users from a JSON file using Ansible playbooks

7.5. Ensuring the absence of users using Ansible playbooks

7.6. Additional resources

Learn

Try, buy, & sell

Communities

About Red Hat Documentation

Making open source more inclusive

About Red Hat

Red Hat legal and privacy links

Red Hat legal and privacy links