user

Use the user resource to add users, update existing users, remove users, and to lock/unlock user passwords.

Syntax

A user resource block manages users on a node:

user 'a user' do
  comment 'A random user'
  uid '1234'
  gid '1234'
  home '/home/random'
  shell '/bin/bash'
  password '$1$JJsvHslasdfjVEroftprNn4JHtDi'
end

The full syntax for all of the properties that are available to the user resource is:

user 'name' do
  comment                    String
  force                      TrueClass, FalseClass # see description
  gid                        String, Integer
  home                       String
  manage_home                TrueClass, FalseClass
  non_unique                 TrueClass, FalseClass
  notifies                   # see description
  password                   String
  provider                   Chef::Provider::User
  shell                      String
  subscribes                 # see description
  system                     TrueClass, FalseClass
  uid                        String, Integer
  username                   String # defaults to 'name' if not specified
  action                     Symbol # defaults to :create if not specified
end

where

• user is the resource
• name is the name of the resource block
• :action identifies the steps the chef-client will take to bring the node into the desired state
• comment, force, gid, home, manage_home, non_unique, password, provider, shell, system, uid, and username are properties of this resource, with the Ruby type shown. See “Properties” section below for more information about all of the properties that may be used with this resource.

Actions

This resource has the following actions:

:create

Default. Create a user with given properties. If a user already exists (but does not match), update that user to match.

:lock

Lock a user’s password.

:manage

Manage an existing user. This action does nothing if the user does not exist.

:modify

Modify an existing user. This action raises an exception if the user does not exist.

:nothing

Define this resource block to do nothing until notified by another resource to take action. When this resource is notified, this resource block is either run immediately or it is queued up to be run at the end of the chef-client run.

:remove

Remove a user.

:unlock

Unlock a user’s password.

Properties

This resource has the following properties:

comment

Ruby Type: String

One (or more) comments about the user.

force

Ruby Types: TrueClass, FalseClass

Force the removal of a user. May be used only with the :remove action.

Warning

Using this property may leave the system in an inconsistent state. For example, a user account will be removed even if the user is logged in. A user’s home directory will be removed, even if that directory is shared by multiple users.

gid

Ruby Types: String, Integer

The identifier for the group.

home

Ruby Type: String

The location of the home directory.

ignore_failure

Ruby Types: TrueClass, FalseClass

Continue running a recipe if a resource fails for any reason. Default value: false.

manage_home

Ruby Types: TrueClass, FalseClass

Manage a user’s home directory.

With the :create action, a user’s home directory is created based on HOME_DIR. If the home directory is missing, it is created unless CREATE_HOME in /etc/login.defs is set to no. When created, a skeleton set of files and sub-directories is also created in the home directory.

With the :modify action, a user’s home directory is moved to HOME_DIR. If the home directory is missing, it is created unless CREATE_HOME in /etc/login.defs is set to no. The contents of the user’s home directory are moved to the new location.

non_unique

Ruby Types: TrueClass, FalseClass

Create a duplicate (non-unique) user account.

notifies

Ruby Type: Symbol, ‘Chef::Resource[String]’

A resource may notify another resource to take action when its state changes. Specify a 'resource[name]', the :action that resource should take, and then the :timer for that action. A resource may notifiy more than one resource; use a notifies statement for each resource to be notified.

A timer specifies the point during the chef-client run at which a notification is run. The following timers are available:

:delayed

Default. Specifies that a notification should be queued up, and then executed at the very end of the chef-client run.

:immediate, :immediately

Specifies that a notification should be run immediately, per resource notified.

The syntax for notifies is:

notifies :action, 'resource[name]', :timer

password

Ruby Type: String

The password shadow hash. This property requires that ruby-shadow be installed. This is part of the Debian package: libshadow-ruby1.8.

provider

Ruby Type: Chef Class

Optional. Explicitly specifies a provider. See “Providers” section below for more information.

retries

Ruby Type: Integer

The number of times to catch exceptions and retry the resource. Default value: 0.

retry_delay

Ruby Type: Integer

The retry delay (in seconds). Default value: 2.

shell

Ruby Type: String

The login shell.

subscribes

Ruby Type: Symbol, ‘Chef::Resource[String]’

A resource may listen to another resource, and then take action if the state of the resource being listened to changes. Specify a 'resource[name]', the :action to be taken, and then the :timer for that action.

A timer specifies the point during the chef-client run at which a notification is run. The following timers are available:

:delayed

Default. Specifies that a notification should be queued up, and then executed at the very end of the chef-client run.

:immediate, :immediately

Specifies that a notification should be run immediately, per resource notified.

The syntax for subscribes is:

subscribes :action, 'resource[name]', :timer

supports

Ruby Type: Hash

A Mash where keys represent features and values are booleans that indicate if that feature is supported. Default value: :manage_home => false, :non_unique => false.

system

Ruby Types: TrueClass, FalseClass

Create a system user. This property may be used with useradd as the provider to create a system user which passes the -r flag to useradd.

uid

Ruby Types: String, Integer

The numeric user identifier.

username

Ruby Type: String

The name of the user. Default value: the name of the resource block See “Syntax” section above for more information.

Password Shadow Hash

There are a number of encryption options and tools that can be used to create a password shadow hash. In general, using a strong encryption method like SHA-512 and the passwd command in the OpenSSL toolkit is a good approach, however the encryption options and tools that are available may be different from one distribution to another. The following examples show how the command line can be used to create a password shadow hash. When using the passwd command in the OpenSSL tool:

openssl passwd -1 "theplaintextpassword"

When using mkpasswd:

mkpasswd -m sha-512

For more information:

• http://www.openssl.org/docs/apps/passwd.html
• Check the local documentation or package repository for the distribution that is being used. For example, on Ubuntu 9.10-10.04, the mkpasswd package is required and on Ubuntu 10.10+ the whois package is required.

Providers

Where a resource represents a piece of the system (and its desired state), a provider defines the steps that are needed to bring that piece of the system from its current state into the desired state.

The chef-client will determine the correct provider based on configuration data collected by Ohai at the start of the chef-client run. This configuration data is then mapped to a platform and an associated list of providers.

Generally, it’s best to let the chef-client choose the provider, and this is (by far) the most common approach. However, in some cases, specifying a provider may be desirable. There are two approaches:

• Use a more specific short name—yum_package "foo" do instead of package "foo" do, script "foo" do instead of bash "foo" do, and so on—when available
• Use the provider property within the resource block to specify the long name of the provider as a property of a resource. For example: provider Chef::Provider::Long::Name

This resource has the following providers:

Chef::Provider::User::Useradd, user

The default provider for the user resource.

Chef::Provider::User::Pw, user

The provider for the FreeBSD platform.

Chef::Provider::User::Dscl, user

The provider for the Mac OS X platform.

Chef::Provider::User::Windows, user

The provider for all Microsoft Windows platforms.

Examples

The following examples demonstrate various approaches for using resources in recipes. If you want to see examples of how Chef uses resources in recipes, take a closer look at the cookbooks that Chef authors and maintains: https://github.com/chef-cookbooks.

Create a user named “random”

user 'random' do
  manage_home true
  comment 'User Random'
  uid '1234'
  gid '1234'
  home '/home/random'
  shell '/bin/bash'
  password '$1$JJsvHslV$szsCjVEroftprNn4JHtDi'
end

Create a system user

user 'systemguy' do
  comment 'system guy'
  system true
  shell '/bin/false'
end

Create a system user with a variable

The following example shows how to create a system user. In this instance, the home value is calculated and stored in a variable called user_home which sets the user’s home attribute.

user_home = "/home/#{node['cookbook_name']['user']}"

user node['cookbook_name']['user'] do
  gid node['cookbook_name']['group']
  shell '/bin/bash'
  home user_home
  system true
  action :create
end