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

Just for completeness I will post the ad-hoc command using ansible since there is a catch there as well.

First try generating an encrypted password using the mkpasswd utility that is available on most Linux systems:

mkpasswd --method=SHA-512

Then try the ansible ad-hock command:

ansible all -m user -a 'name=testuser shell=/bin/bash \
     comment="Test User" password=$6$XXXX' -k -u admin --sudo

But make sure:

1. The command is in single quotes and NOT double otherwise your password will never work
2. You run it with --sudo or you end up with an error like (useradd: cannot lock /etc/passwd; try again later)