Change user password - Ansible module user
How to write an Ansible Playbook to assign the password "password" to an "example" user account in a Linux system with SHA512 encryption.


How to change a user password 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 change user password
Today we’re talking about the 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
- state string - present/absent
- password string - Linux encrypted, macOS cleartext
This module has many parameters to perform any task. The only required is “name”, which is the username. In the parameter “state” we need to specify “present” options, obviously, we can’t change a password of a non-existent account. The most important parameter is “password” which allows you to specify the new password. For macOS target, the password is in cleartext. For the Linux target, the “password” must be encrypted before. We could use the “passhword_hash” filter to generate a password. Please note that you could specify the encryption algorithm as well as the salt to make your password more robust.
The Best Resources For Ansible
Video Course
Printed Book
eBooks
- Ansible by Examples: 200+ Automation Examples For Linux and Windows System Administrator and DevOps
- Ansible For Windows By Examples: 50+ Automation Examples For Windows System Administrator And DevOps
- Ansible For Linux by Examples: 100+ Automation Examples For Linux System Administrator and DevOps
- Ansible Linux Filesystem By Examples: 40+ Automation Examples on Linux File and Directory Operation for Modern IT Infrastructure
- Ansible For Containers and Kubernetes By Examples: 20+ Automation Examples To Automate Containers, Kubernetes and OpenShift
- Ansible For Security by Examples: 100+ Automation Examples to Automate Security and Verify Compliance for IT Modern Infrastructure
- Ansible Tips and Tricks: 10+ Ansible Examples to Save Time and Automate More Tasks
- Ansible Linux Users & Groups By Examples: 20+ Automation Examples on Linux Users and Groups Operation for Modern IT Infrastructure
- Ansible For PostgreSQL by Examples: 10+ Examples To Automate Your PostgreSQL database
- Ansible For Amazon Web Services AWS By Examples: 10+ Examples To Automate Your AWS Modern Infrastructure
- Ansible Automation Platform By Example: A step-by-step guide for the most common user scenarios
demo
Let’s jump in a real-life Ansible Playbook to change a user account password in Linux.
code
- change_password.yml
---
- name: user module demo
hosts: all
become: true
vars:
myuser: "example"
mypassword: "password"
tasks:
- name: change password
ansible.builtin.user:
name: "{{ myuser }}"
state: present
password: "{{ mypassword | password_hash('sha512') }}"
execution
output
$ ansible-playbook -i demo/inventory change\ user\ password/user.yaml
PLAY [user module demo] ***************************************************************************
TASK [Gathering Facts] ****************************************************************************
ok: [demo.example.com]
TASK [change password] ****************************************************************************
changed: [demo.example.com]
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
demo.example.com : ok=2 changed=1 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0
verification
$ sshpass -p 'password' [email protected]
Please note: the sshpass
must be installed on the system.
Recap
Now you know how to change the password of a user account with Ansible. Subscribe to the YouTube channel, Medium, Website, Twitter, and Substack to not miss the next episode of the Ansible Pilot.
Academy
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