Ansible Pilot

Create a group in Linux - Ansible module group

How to create the "example" group or verify that is present on your target Linux system or macOS.

October 22, 2021
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How to create a group in 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 creates a group

Today we’re talking about the Ansible module group. The full name is ansible.builtin.group, 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 adds or removes groups. It supports a huge variety of Linux distributions and macOS. It relies on three Linux commands: groupadd, groupdel and groupmod. For Windows, use the ansible.windows.win_group module instead.

Parameters

This module has some parameters to perform some tasks. The only required is “name”, which is the group name. The “state” parameter allows us to create or delete a group, in our use case the default it’s already set to “present” to create a group. The “system” parameter allows for the creation of a system group, default it’s not. You could specify the “GID”, the group identifier, in using the “gid” parameter. The “local” parameter allows using the “local” command alternatives on platforms that implement it if you have a central authentication system.

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demo

Let’s jump in a real-life Ansible Playbook to create a group.

code

---
- name: group module demo
  hosts: all
  become: true
  vars:
    mygroup: "example"
  tasks:
    - name: create group
      ansible.builtin.group:
        name: "{{ mygroup }}"
        state: present

execution

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

verification

$ ssh [email protected]
$ sudo su
# getent group | grep example

example:x:1001:

code with ❤️ in GitHub

Recap

Now you know how to create a group in Linux with Ansible. Subscribe to the YouTube channel, Medium, and Website, X (formerly Twitter) to not miss the next episode of the Ansible Pilot.

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