Change the User Primary Group on Linux - Ansible module user

How to automate the changing of the primary group of a user "example" from "example" group to "users" group on a target the Linux with few lines of Ansible playbook code.

December 15, 2021

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#ansible #user #module #linux #user-management #rhel #centos #fedora #ubuntu #debian #suse #getent-passwd

How to Change the User Primary Group on Linux with Ansible?

I’m going to show you a live demo with some simple Ansible code. I’m Luca Berton and welcome to today’s episode of Ansible Pilot.

Ansible changes the User Primary Group on Linux

ansible.builtin.user
Manage user accounts

Today we’re talking about Ansible module user. The full name is ansible.builtin.user, which means that is part of the collection of modules “builtin” with ansible and shipped with it. It’s a module pretty stable and out for years, it manages user accounts. It supports a huge variety of Linux distributions, SunOS and macOS, and FreeBSD. For Windows, use the ansible.windows.win_user module instead.

Parameters

name string - username
group string - user’s primary group (only one)
groups list / elements=string - list of groups the user will be added to
append boolean - no/yes - If yes, add the user to the groups specified in groups. If no, replace.

This module has many parameters, let me highlight the useful for our use case. The only required is “name”, which is the username. The primary group is specified in the “group” parameter, every user need to be part of only one group. The “groups” parameter specifies the list of additional groups that the user will be added to. This type of group sometimes is called also “secondary”, “additional” or “supplementary”. The parameter “append” is very important. With the “yes” option, the user is going to be added to the specified groups. With the “no” option, all group members are going to be overwritten with the specified groups. So to recap is you specify the “no” option you are going to lose all the previous group associations, please be careful!

demo

How to change the User Primary Group on Linux with Ansible Playbook.

code

user_group_changeprimary.yml

---
- name: user module demo
  hosts: all
  become: true
  vars:
    myuser: "example"
    mygroup: "users"
  tasks:
    - name: change primary group
      ansible.builtin.user:
        name: "{{ myuser }}"
        group: "{{ mygroup }}"

execution

$ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory users_and_groups/user_group_changeprimary.yml
PLAY [user module demo] ***************************************************************************
TASK [Gathering Facts] ****************************************************************************
ok: [demo.example.com]
TASK [change primare group] ***********************************************************************
changed: [demo.example.com]
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
demo.example.com           : ok=2    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0
ansible-pilot $

before execution

$ ssh [email protected]
Last login: Wed Dec 15 13:00:47 2021 from 192.168.0.101
[devops@demo ~]$ sudo su
[root@demo devops]# cat /etc/os-release 
NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux"
VERSION="8.5 (Ootpa)"
ID="rhel"
ID_LIKE="fedora"
VERSION_ID="8.5"
PLATFORM_ID="platform:el8"
PRETTY_NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 (Ootpa)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;31"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:8::baseos"
HOME_URL="https://www.redhat.com/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://access.redhat.com/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT_VERSION=8.5
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Red Hat Enterprise Linux"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION="8.5"
[root@demo devops]# getent passwd | grep example
example:x:1002:1002:Ansible example:/home/example:/bin/bash
[root@demo devops]# id example
uid=1002(example) gid=1002(example) groups=1002(example),10(wheel)
[root@demo devops]# groups example
example : example wheel
[root@demo devops]#

after execution

$ ssh [email protected]
[devops@demo ~]$ sudo su
[root@demo devops]# getent passwd | grep example
example:x:1002:100:Ansible example:/home/example:/bin/bash
[root@demo devops]# id example
uid=1002(example) gid=100(users) groups=100(users),10(wheel)
[root@demo devops]# groups example
example : users wheel
[root@demo devops]#

code with ❤️ in GitHub

Recap

Now you know how to change the User Primary Group on Linux with Ansible. Subscribe to the YouTube channel, Medium, Website, Twitter, and Substack to not miss the next episode of the Ansible Pilot.