User Chef Cookbook

A convenient Chef LWRP to manage user accounts and SSH keys. This is not the Opscode users cookbook.

• Website: http://fnichol.github.io/chef-user/
• Opscode Community Site: http://community.opscode.com/cookbooks/user
• Source Code: https://github.com/fnichol/chef-user

Simply include this cookbook as a dependency in metadata.rb and the user_account resource will be available. Example:

# In your_cookbook/metadata.rb
depends 'user'

# In your_cookbook/recipes/default.rb
user_account 'hsolo' do
    ssh_keygen true
end

To use recipe[user::data_bag], include it in your run_list and have a data bag called "users" with an item like the following:

{
  "id"        : "hsolo",
  "comment"   : "Han Solo",
  "home"      : "/opt/hoth/hsolo",
  "groups"    : ["admin", "www-data"],
  "ssh_keys"  : ["123...", "456..."]
}

or a user to be removed:

{
  "id"      : "lando",
  "action"  : "remove"
}

If you have a username containing a period, use a dash in the data bag item and set a username attribute:

{
  "id"        : "luke-skywalker",
  "username"  : "luke.skywalker",
  "action"    : ["create", "lock"]
}

The data bag recipe will iterate through a list of usernames defined in node['users'] (by default) and attempt to pull in the user's information from the data bag item. In other words, having:

node['users'] = ['hsolo', 'lando', 'luke.skywalker']

will set up the hsolo user information and not use the lando user information.

Chef

Tested on 0.10.8 but newer and older version should work just fine. File an issue if this isn't the case.

Platform

The following platforms have been tested with this cookbook, meaning that the recipes run on these platforms without error:

• ubuntu
• debian
• mac_os_x

Cookbooks

There are no external cookbook dependencies.

Depending on the situation and use case there are several ways to install this cookbook. All the methods listed below assume a tagged version release is the target, but omit the tags to get the head of development. A valid Chef repository structure like the Opscode repo is also assumed.

From the Community Site

To install this cookbook from the Community Site, use the knife command:

knife cookbook site install user

Using Berkshelf

Berkshelf is a cookbook dependency manager and development workflow assistant. To install Berkshelf:

cd chef-repo
gem install berkshelf
berks init

To use the Community Site version:

echo "cookbook 'user'" >> Berksfile
berks install

Or to reference the Git version:

repo="fnichol/chef-user"
latest_release=$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/$repo/git/refs/tags \
| ruby -rjson -e '
  j = JSON.parse(STDIN.read);
  puts j.map { |t| t["ref"].split("/").last }.sort.last
')
cat >> Berksfile <<END_OF_BERKSFILE
cookbook 'user',
  :git => 'git://github.com/$repo.git', :branch => '$latest_release'
END_OF_BERKSFILE
berks install

Using Librarian-Chef

Librarian-Chef is a bundler for your Chef cookbooks. To install Librarian-Chef:

cd chef-repo
gem install librarian
librarian-chef init

To use the Opscode platform version:

echo "cookbook 'user'" >> Cheffile
librarian-chef install

Or to reference the Git version:

repo="fnichol/chef-user"
latest_release=$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/$repo/git/refs/tags \
| ruby -rjson -e '
  j = JSON.parse(STDIN.read);
  puts j.map { |t| t["ref"].split("/").last }.sort.last
')
cat >> Cheffile <<END_OF_CHEFFILE
cookbook 'user',
  :git => 'git://github.com/$repo.git', :ref => '$latest_release'
END_OF_CHEFFILE
librarian-chef install

default

This recipe is a no-op and does nothing.

data_bag

Processes a list of users with data drawn from a data bag. The default data bag is users and the list of user accounts to create on this node is set on node['users'].

home_root

The default parent path of a user's home directory. Each resource can override this value which varies by platform. Generally speaking, the default value is "/home".

default_shell

The default user shell given to a user. Each resource can override this value which varies by platform. Generally speaking, the default value is "/bin/bash".

home_dir_mode

The default Unix permissions applied to a user's home directory.

The default is "2755".

manage_home

Whether of not to manage the home directory of a user by default. Each resource can override this value. The are 2 valid states:

• "true", true, or "yes": will manage the user's home directory.
• "false", false, or "no": will not manage the user's home directory.

The default is true.

non_unique

Whether of not to allow the creation of a user account with a duplicate UID. Each resource can override this value. The are 2 valid states:

• "true", true, or "yes": will allow duplicate UIDs.
• "false", false, or "no": will not allow duplicate UIDs.

The default is false.

create_group

Whether or not to to create a group with the same name as the user by default. Each resource can override this value. The are 2 valid states:

• "true", true, or "yes": will create a group for the user by default.
• "false", false, or "no": will not create a group for the user by default.

The default is true.

ssh_keygen

Whether or not to generate an SSH keypair for the user by default. Each resource can override this value. There are 2 valid states:

• "true", true, or "yes": will generate an SSH keypair when the account is created.
• "false", false, or "no": will not generate an SSH keypair when the account is created.

The default is true.

data_bag_name

The data bag name containing a group of user account information. This is used by the data_bag recipe to use as a database of user accounts.

The default is "users".

user_array_node_attr

The node attributes containing an array of users to be managed. If a nested hash in the node's attributes is required, then use a / between subhashes. For example, if the users' array is stored in node['system']['accounts']), then set node['user']['user_array_node_attr'] to "system/accounts".

The default is "users".

user_account

Note: in order to use the password attribute, you must have the ruby-shadow gem installed. On Debian/Ubuntu you can get this by installing the "libshadow-ruby1.8" package.

Actions

Attributes

Examples

Creating a User Account

user_account 'hsolo' do
  comment   'Han Solo'
  ssh_keys  ['3dc348d9af8027df7b9c...', '2154d3734d609eb5c452...']
  home      '/opt/hoth/hsolo'
end

Creating and Locking a User Account

user_account 'lando' do
  action  [:create, :lock]
end

Removing a User account

user_account 'obiwan' do
  action  :remove
end

• Source hosted at GitHub
• Report issues/Questions/Feature requests on GitHub Issues

Pull requests are very welcome! Make sure your patches are well tested. Ideally create a topic branch for every separate change you make.

Author:: [Fletcher Nichol][fnichol] (fnichol@nichol.ca)

Copyright 2011, Fletcher Nichol

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.