Creating a new user and password with Ansible

Question

I have an ansible task which creates a new user on ubuntu 12.04;

- name: Add deployment user
    action: user name=deployer password=mypassword

Answer 1

The purpose of the role in this answer is to generate random password for new_user_name and expire the password immediately. The new_user_name is required to change the password on his/her first logon.

create_user.yml:

---
# create_user playbook

- hosts: your_host_group
  become: True
  user: ansible

  roles:
    - create_user

roles/create_user/tasks/main.yml:

---
# Generate random password for new_user_name and the new_user_name
# is required to change his/her password on first logon. 

- name: Generate password for new user
  shell: makepasswd --chars=20
  register: user_password

- name: Generate encrypted password
  shell: mkpasswd --method=SHA-512 {{ user_password.stdout }}
  register: encrypted_user_password

- name: Create user account
  user: name={{ new_user_name }}
        password={{ encrypted_user_password.stdout }}
        state=present
        append=yes
        shell="/bin/bash"
        update_password=always
  when: new_user_name is defined and new_user_name in uids
  register: user_created

- name: Force user to change password
  shell: chage -d 0 {{ new_user_name }}
  when: user_created.changed

- name: User created
  debug: msg="Password for {{ new_user_name }} is {{ user_password.stdout }}"
  when: user_created.changed

When you want to create a new user:

ansible-playbook -i hosts.ini create_user.yml --extra-vars "new_user_name=kelvin"