Ansible Remove User Account: Delete Users with user Module — Video Tutorial

How to remove a user account with Ansible? I'm going to show you a live Playbook with some simple Ansible code. I'm Luca Berton and welcome to today's episode of Ansible Pilot. Ansible remove user account 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. This module uses Linux distributions `userdel` to delete, on FreeBSD, this module uses `pw userdel`, on macOS, this module uses `dscl`. For Windows, use the `ansible.windows.win_user` module instead. Main Parameters - **name** _string_ - username - state _string_ - present/absent - remove _boolean_ - **no**/yes This module has many parameters to perform any task. The only required is "name", which is the username. "state" allows us to create or delete a user, in the use case we need to specify "absent" to delete a user. If we would like to try to remove the directories associated with the user, we need to set the parameter "remove". The behavior is the same as `userdel --remove`. Files in the user's home directory will be removed along with the home directory itself and the user's mail spool. Files in other parts of the file system will have to be searched for and deleted manually. ## Playbook Let's jump into a real-life Ansible Playbook to delete a user. - _delete_user.yml_ ```yaml --- - name: user module Playbook hosts: all become: true tasks: - name: user example not present ansible.builtin.user: name: example state: "absent" remove: true ``` [code with ❤️ in GitHub](https://github.com/lucab85/ansible-pilot/tree/master/delete%20user%20account) Conclusion Now you know how to remove a user account with Ansible. Advanced User Removal Examples Remove user and their home directory ```yaml - name: Remove user and home directory ansible.builtin.user: name: olduser state: absent remove: true # Removes home directory and mail spool become: true ``` Force remove user (even if logged in) ```yaml - name: Force remove user with active sessions ansible.builtin.user: name: olduser state: absent remove: true force: true # Kills user processes and removes even if logged in become: true ``` Remove multiple users ```yaml - name: Remove decommissioned users ansible.builtin.user: name: "{{ item }}" state: absent remove: true loop: - contractor1 - contractor2 - temp_user become: true ``` Safe removal with backup ```yaml - name: Check if user exists ansible.builtin.getent: database: passwd key: "{{ target_user }}" register: user_check failed_when: false - name: Backup home directory before removal ansible.builtin.archive: path: "/home/{{ target_user }}" dest: "/backup/{{