Chapter 4. Managing user accounts using Ansible playbooks

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:

4.1. 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.

A flow chart displaying 4 items: Active users - Stage users - Preserved users - Deleted users. Arrows communicate the relationships between each kind of user: Active users can be "preserved" as Preserved users. Preserved users can be "restored" as Active users. Preserved users can be "staged" as Stage users and Stage users can be "activated" into Active users. All users can be deleted to become "Deleted users".

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.

4.2. 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.

Procedure

  1. Create an inventory file, for example inventory.file, and define ipaserver in it:

    [ipaserver]
    server.idm.example.com
  2. 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.

  3. 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 steps

  • 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.

4.3. 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.

Procedure

  1. Create an inventory file, for example inventory.file, and define ipaserver in it:

    [ipaserver]
    server.idm.example.com
  2. 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.

  3. 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 steps

  • 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.

4.4. 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.

Procedure

  1. Create an inventory file, for example inventory.file, and define ipaserver in it:

    [ipaserver]
    server.idm.example.com
  2. 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 }}"
  3. 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"
       }
      ]
    }
  4. 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 steps

  • 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.

4.5. 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.

Procedure

  1. Create an inventory file, for example inventory.file, and define ipaserver in it:

    [ipaserver]
    server.idm.example.com
  2. 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
  3. 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 steps

You can verify that the user accounts do not exist 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. 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.

4.6. 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.