Overview

The Puppet Enterprise (PE) console enables you connect with an external directory, such as Active Directory or OpenLDAP, and import users and groups, rather than creating and maintaining users and groups in multiple locations. You can also create user roles, and assign users to those roles. Roles are granted permissions, such as permission to act on node groups. When you assign roles to users or user groups, you are granting users permissions in a more organized way.

In this exercise, you’ll create a new user role and give the role view permissions on your node group. And you’ll create a new local user, and assign a user role to that user. This exercise doesn’t cover connecting with an OpenLDAP or Active Directory. For more information about that, see Working with Role-Based Access Control.

Note: Users and user groups are not currently deletable. And roles are deletable by API, not in the console. Therefore, we recommend that you try out these steps on a virtual machine.

Prerequisites: This guide assumes you’ve already installed a monolithic PE deployment, and have installed at least one Windows node.

It also assumes you’ve installed a Windows module. Finally, you must have admin permissions to complete these steps, which include assigning a user to a role.

Create a new user role

Add a user role so you can manage permissions for groups of users at once.

1. In the console, click Access control. The User Roles page should be open.
2. For Name, type Windows users, and then for Description, type a description for the role, such as Windows users.
3. Click Add role.

Create a new user and add the user to your new role

These steps demonstrate how to create a new local user. See Adding LDAP Users to PE for information about adding existing users from your directory service.

1. On the Access control page, click Users.
2. In the Full name field, type in a user name.
3. In the Login field, type a username for the user.

4. Click Add local user.

   Note: When you create new local users, you need to send them a login token. Do this by clicking the new user’s name in the User list and then on the upper-right of the user’s page, click Generate password reset. A message opens with a link that you must copy and send to the new user.

5. Click User Roles and then click Windows users.
6. On the Member users tab, on the User name list, select the new user you created, and then click Add user and click the commit button.

Enable a user to log in

When you create new local users, you need to send them a password reset token so that they can log in for the first time.

1. On the Users page, click the new local user. The new user’s page opens.
2. On the upper-right of the page, click Generate password reset. A Password reset link message box opens.
3. Copy the link provided in the message and send it to the new user. Then you can close the message.

Give your new role access to the node group you created

1. From the Windows users role page, click the Permissions tab.
2. In the Type box, select Node groups.
3. In the Permission box, select View.
4. In the Object box, select windows_example.
5. Click Add permission, and then click the commit button. Now, you have given members of the Windows users role permission to view the windows_example node group.

Next: Writing Modules (Windows)