Resource Type: user

NOTE: This page was generated from the Puppet source code on 2022-02-07 10:05:45 -0800

user

Description

Manage users. This type is mostly built to manage system users, so it is lacking some features useful for managing normal users.

This resource type uses the prescribed native tools for creating groups and generally uses POSIX APIs for retrieving information about them. It does not directly modify /etc/passwd or anything.

Autorequires: If Puppet is managing the user's primary group (as provided in the gid attribute) or any group listed in the groups attribute then the user resource will autorequire that group. If Puppet is managing any role accounts corresponding to the user's roles, the user resource will autorequire those role accounts.

Attributes 

user { 'resource title':
  name                 => # (namevar) The user name. While naming limitations vary by...
  ensure               => # The basic state that the object should be in....
  allowdupe            => # Whether to allow duplicate UIDs.  Default...
  attribute_membership => # Whether specified attribute value pairs should...
  attributes           => # Specify AIX attributes for the user in an array...
  auth_membership      => # Whether specified auths should be considered the 
  auths                => # The auths the user has.  Multiple auths should...
  comment              => # A description of the user.  Generally the user's 
  expiry               => # The expiry date for this user. Provide as either 
  forcelocal           => # Forces the management of local accounts when...
  gid                  => # The user's primary group.  Can be specified...
  groups               => # The groups to which the user belongs.  The...
  home                 => # The home directory of the user.  The directory...
  ia_load_module       => # The name of the I&A module to use to manage this 
  iterations           => # This is the number of iterations of a chained...
  key_membership       => # Whether specified key/value pairs should be...
  keys                 => # Specify user attributes in an array of key ...
  loginclass           => # The name of login class to which the user...
  managehome           => # Whether to manage the home directory when Puppet 
  membership           => # If `minimum` is specified, Puppet will ensure...
  password             => # The user's password, in whatever encrypted...
  password_max_age     => # The maximum number of days a password may be...
  password_min_age     => # The minimum number of days a password must be...
  password_warn_days   => # The number of days before a password is going to 
  profile_membership   => # Whether specified roles should be treated as the 
  profiles             => # The profiles the user has.  Multiple profiles...
  project              => # The name of the project associated with a...
  provider             => # The specific backend to use for this `user...
  purge_ssh_keys       => # Whether to purge authorized SSH keys for this...
  role_membership      => # Whether specified roles should be considered the 
  roles                => # The roles the user has.  Multiple roles should...
  salt                 => # This is the 32-byte salt used to generate the...
  shell                => # The user's login shell.  The shell must exist...
  system               => # Whether the user is a system user, according to...
  uid                  => # The user ID; must be specified numerically. If...
  # ...plus any applicable metaparameters.
}

name

(Namevar: If omitted, this attribute's value defaults to the resource's title.)

The user name. While naming limitations vary by operating system, it is advisable to restrict names to the lowest common denominator, which is a maximum of 8 characters beginning with a letter.

Note that Puppet considers user names to be case-sensitive, regardless of the platform's own rules; be sure to always use the same case when referring to a given user.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

ensure

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

The basic state that the object should be in.

Allowed values:

  • present

  • absent

  • role

(↑ Back to user attributes)

attribute_membership

Whether specified attribute value pairs should be treated as the complete list (inclusive) or the minimum list (minimum) of attribute/value pairs for the user.

Default: minimum

Allowed values:

  • inclusive

  • minimum

(↑ Back to user attributes)

attributes

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

Specify AIX attributes for the user in an array or hash of attribute = value pairs.

For example:

['minage=0', 'maxage=5', 'SYSTEM=compat']

or

attributes => { 'minage' => '0', 'maxage' => '5', 'SYSTEM' => 'compat' }

Requires features manages_aix_lam.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

auth_membership

Whether specified auths should be considered the complete list (inclusive) or the minimum list (minimum) of auths the user has. This setting is specific to managing Solaris authorizations.

Default: minimum

Allowed values:

  • inclusive

  • minimum

(↑ Back to user attributes)

auths

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

The auths the user has. Multiple auths should be specified as an array.

Requires features manages_solaris_rbac.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

comment

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

A description of the user. Generally the user's full name.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

expiry

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

The expiry date for this user. Provide as either the special value absent to ensure that the account never expires, or as a zero-padded YYYY-MM-DD format -- for example, 2010-02-19.

Allowed values:

  • absent

  • /^\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}$/

Requires features manages_expiry.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

forcelocal

Forces the management of local accounts when accounts are also being managed by some other Name Service Switch (NSS). For AIX, refer to the ia_load_module parameter.

This option relies on your operating system's implementation of luser* commands, such as luseradd , and lgroupadd, lusermod. The forcelocal option could behave unpredictably in some circumstances. If the tools it depends on are not available, it might have no effect at all.

Default: false

Allowed values:

  • true

  • false

  • yes

  • no

Requires features manages_local_users_and_groups.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

gid

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

The user's primary group. Can be specified numerically or by name.

This attribute is not supported on Windows systems; use the groups attribute instead. (On Windows, designating a primary group is only meaningful for domain accounts, which Puppet does not currently manage.)

(↑ Back to user attributes)

groups

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

The groups to which the user belongs. The primary group should not be listed, and groups should be identified by name rather than by GID. Multiple groups should be specified as an array.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

home

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

The home directory of the user. The directory must be created separately and is not currently checked for existence.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

ia_load_module

The name of the I&A module to use to manage this user. This should be set to files if managing local users.

Requires features manages_aix_lam.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

iterations

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

This is the number of iterations of a chained computation of the PBKDF2 password hash. This parameter is used in OS X, and is required for managing passwords on OS X 10.8 and newer.

Requires features manages_password_salt.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

key_membership

Whether specified key/value pairs should be considered the complete list (inclusive) or the minimum list (minimum) of the user's attributes.

Default: minimum

Allowed values:

  • inclusive

  • minimum

(↑ Back to user attributes)

keys

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

Specify user attributes in an array of key = value pairs.

Requires features manages_solaris_rbac.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

loginclass

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

The name of login class to which the user belongs.

Requires features manages_loginclass.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

managehome

Whether to manage the home directory when Puppet creates or removes the user. This creates the home directory if Puppet also creates the user account, and deletes the home directory if Puppet also removes the user account.

This parameter has no effect unless Puppet is also creating or removing the user in the resource at the same time. For instance, Puppet creates a home directory for a managed user if ensure => present and the user does not exist at the time of the Puppet run. If the home directory is then deleted manually, Puppet will not recreate it on the next run.

Note that on Windows, this manages creation/deletion of the user profile instead of the home directory. The user profile is stored in the C:\Users<username> directory.

Default: false

Allowed values:

  • true

  • false

  • yes

  • no

(↑ Back to user attributes)

membership

If minimum is specified, Puppet will ensure that the user is a member of all specified groups, but will not remove any other groups that the user is a part of.

If inclusive is specified, Puppet will ensure that the user is a member of only specified groups.

Default: minimum

Allowed values:

  • inclusive

  • minimum

(↑ Back to user attributes)

password

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

The user's password, in whatever encrypted format the local system requires. Consult your operating system's documentation for acceptable password encryption formats and requirements.

  • Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6, and some older Linux distributions, use salted SHA1 hashes. You can use Puppet's built-in sha1 function to generate a salted SHA1 hash from a password.

  • Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), and many recent Linux distributions, use salted SHA512 hashes. The Puppet Labs stdlib module contains a str2saltedsha512 function which can generate password hashes for these operating systems.

  • OS X 10.8 and higher use salted SHA512 PBKDF2 hashes. When managing passwords on these systems, the salt and iterations attributes need to be specified as well as the password.

  • macOS 10.15 and higher require the salt to be 32-bytes. Since Puppet's user resource requires the value to be hex encoded, the length of the salt's string must be 64.

  • Windows passwords can be managed only in cleartext, because there is no Windows API for setting the password hash.

Enclose any value that includes a dollar sign ($) in single quotes (') to avoid accidental variable interpolation.

To redact passwords from reports to PuppetDB, use the Sensitive data type. For example, this resource protects the password:

user { 'foo':
  ensure   => present,
  password => Sensitive("my secret password")
}

This results in the password being redacted from the report, as in the previous_value, desired_value, and message fields below.

    events:
    - !ruby/object:Puppet::Transaction::Event
      audited: false
      property: password
      previous_value: "[redacted]"
      desired_value: "[redacted]"
      historical_value:
      message: changed [redacted] to [redacted]
      name: :password_changed
      status: success
      time: 2017-05-17 16:06:02.934398293 -07:00
      redacted: true
      corrective_change: false
    corrective_change: false

Requires features manages_passwords.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

password_max_age

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

The maximum number of days a password may be used before it must be changed.

Requires features manages_password_age.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

password_min_age

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

The minimum number of days a password must be used before it may be changed.

Requires features manages_password_age.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

password_warn_days

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

The number of days before a password is going to expire (see the maximum password age) during which the user should be warned.

Requires features manages_password_age.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

profile_membership

Whether specified roles should be treated as the complete list (inclusive) or the minimum list (minimum) of roles of which the user is a member.

Default: minimum

Allowed values:

  • inclusive

  • minimum

(↑ Back to user attributes)

profiles

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

The profiles the user has. Multiple profiles should be specified as an array.

Requires features manages_solaris_rbac.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

project

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

The name of the project associated with a user.

Requires features manages_solaris_rbac.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

purge_ssh_keys

Whether to purge authorized SSH keys for this user if they are not managed with the ssh_authorized_key resource type. This parameter is a noop if the ssh_authorized_key type is not available.

Allowed values are:

  • false (default) --- don't purge SSH keys for this user.

  • true --- look for keys in the .ssh/authorized_keys file in the user's home directory. Purge any keys that aren't managed as ssh_authorized_key resources.

  • An array of file paths --- look for keys in all of the files listed. Purge any keys that aren't managed as ssh_authorized_key resources. If any of these paths starts with ~ or %h, that token will be replaced with the user's home directory.

Default: false

Allowed values:

  • true

  • false

(↑ Back to user attributes)

role_membership

Whether specified roles should be considered the complete list (inclusive) or the minimum list (minimum) of roles the user has.

Default: minimum

Allowed values:

  • inclusive

  • minimum

(↑ Back to user attributes)

roles

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

The roles the user has. Multiple roles should be specified as an array.

Requires features manages_roles.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

salt

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

This is the 32-byte salt used to generate the PBKDF2 password used in OS X. This field is required for managing passwords on OS X >= 10.8.

Requires features manages_password_salt.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

shell

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

The user's login shell. The shell must exist and be executable.

This attribute cannot be managed on Windows systems.

Requires features manages_shell.

(↑ Back to user attributes)

system

Whether the user is a system user, according to the OS's criteria; on most platforms, a UID less than or equal to 500 indicates a system user. This parameter is only used when the resource is created and will not affect the UID when the user is present.

Default: false

Allowed values:

  • true

  • false

  • yes

  • no

(↑ Back to user attributes)

uid

(Property: This attribute represents concrete state on the target system.)

The user ID; must be specified numerically. If no user ID is specified when creating a new user, then one will be chosen automatically. This will likely result in the same user having different UIDs on different systems, which is not recommended. This is especially noteworthy when managing the same user on both Darwin and other platforms, since Puppet does UID generation on Darwin, but the underlying tools do so on other platforms.

On Windows, this property is read-only and will return the user's security identifier (SID).

(↑ Back to user attributes)

Providers

aix

User management for AIX.

  • Required binaries: /usr/sbin/lsuser, /usr/bin/mkuser, /usr/sbin/rmuser, /usr/bin/chuser, /bin/chpasswd

  • Confined to: operatingsystem == aix

  • Default for: ["operatingsystem", "aix"] ==

  • Supported features: manages_aix_lam, manages_homedir, manages_passwords, manages_shell, manages_expiry, manages_password_age, manages_local_users_and_groups

directoryservice

User management on OS X.

  • Required binaries: /usr/bin/uuidgen, /usr/bin/dsimport, /usr/bin/dscl, /usr/bin/dscacheutil

  • Confined to: operatingsystem == darwin, feature == cfpropertylist

  • Default for: ["operatingsystem", "darwin"] ==

  • Supported features: manages_passwords, manages_password_salt, manages_shell

hpuxuseradd

User management for HP-UX. This provider uses the undocumented -F switch to HP-UX's special usermod binary to work around the fact that its standard usermod cannot make changes while the user is logged in. New functionality provides for changing trusted computing passwords and resetting password expirations under trusted computing.

  • Required binaries: /usr/sam/lbin/usermod.sam, /usr/sam/lbin/userdel.sam, /usr/sam/lbin/useradd.sam

  • Confined to: operatingsystem == hp-ux

  • Default for: ["operatingsystem", "hp-ux"] ==

  • Supported features: manages_homedir, allows_duplicates, manages_passwords

ldap

User management via LDAP.

This provider requires that you have valid values for all of the LDAP-related settings in puppet.conf, including ldapbase. You will almost definitely need settings for ldapuser and ldappassword in order for your clients to write to LDAP.

Note that this provider will automatically generate a UID for you if you do not specify one, but it is a potentially expensive operation, as it iterates across all existing users to pick the appropriate next one.

  • Confined to: feature == ldap, false == (Puppet[:ldapuser] == "")

  • Supported features: manages_passwords, manages_shell

openbsd

User management via useradd and its ilk for OpenBSD. Note that you will need to install Ruby's shadow password library (package known as ruby-shadow) if you wish to manage user passwords.

  • Required binaries: useradd, userdel, usermod, passwd

  • Confined to: operatingsystem == openbsd

  • Default for: ["operatingsystem", "openbsd"] ==

  • Supported features: manages_homedir, manages_expiry, system_users, manages_shell

pw

User management via pw on FreeBSD and DragonFly BSD.

  • Required binaries: pw

  • Confined to: operatingsystem == [:freebsd, :dragonfly]

  • Default for: ["operatingsystem", "[:freebsd, :dragonfly]"] ==

  • Supported features: manages_homedir, allows_duplicates, manages_passwords, manages_expiry, manages_shell

user_role_add

User and role management on Solaris, via useradd and roleadd.

  • Required binaries: useradd, userdel, usermod, passwd, roleadd, roledel, rolemod

  • Default for: ["osfamily", "solaris"] ==

  • Supported features: manages_homedir, allows_duplicates, manages_solaris_rbac, manages_roles, manages_passwords, manages_password_age, manages_shell

useradd

User management via useradd and its ilk. Note that you will need to install Ruby's shadow password library (often known as ruby-libshadow) if you wish to manage user passwords.

To use the forcelocal parameter, you need to install the libuser package (providing /usr/sbin/lgroupadd and /usr/sbin/luseradd).

  • Required binaries: useradd, userdel, usermod, chage, chpasswd

  • Supported features: manages_homedir, allows_duplicates, manages_expiry, manages_shell

windows_adsi

Local user management for Windows.

  • Confined to: operatingsystem == windows

  • Default for: ["operatingsystem", "windows"] ==

  • Supported features: manages_homedir, manages_passwords, manages_roles

Provider Features

Available features:

  • allows_duplicates --- The provider supports duplicate users with the same UID.

  • manages_aix_lam --- The provider can manage AIX Loadable Authentication Module (LAM) system.

  • manages_expiry --- The provider can manage the expiry date for a user.

  • manages_homedir --- The provider can create and remove home directories.

  • manages_local_users_and_groups --- Allows local users to be managed on systems that also use some other remote Name Service Switch (NSS) method of managing accounts.

  • manages_loginclass --- The provider can manage the login class for a user.

  • manages_password_age --- The provider can set age requirements and restrictions for passwords.

  • manages_password_salt --- The provider can set a password salt. This is for providers that implement PBKDF2 passwords with salt properties.

  • manages_passwords --- The provider can modify user passwords, by accepting a password hash.

  • manages_roles --- The provider can manage roles

  • manages_shell --- The provider allows for setting shell and validates if possible

  • manages_solaris_rbac --- The provider can manage normal users

  • system_users --- The provider allows you to create system users with lower UIDs.

Provider support:

  • aix - manages aix lam, manages homedir, manages passwords, manages shell, manages expiry, manages password age, manages local users and groups

  • directoryservice - manages passwords, manages password salt, manages shell

  • hpuxuseradd - manages homedir, allows duplicates, manages passwords

  • ldap - manages passwords, manages shell

  • openbsd - manages homedir, manages expiry, system users, manages shell

  • pw - manages homedir, allows duplicates, manages passwords, manages expiry, manages shell

  • user_role_add - manages homedir, allows duplicates, manages solaris rbac, manages roles, manages passwords, manages password age, manages shell

  • useradd - manages homedir, allows duplicates, manages expiry, manages shell

  • windows_adsi - manages homedir, manages passwords, manages roles