Using Ansible Modules to Manage Users and Groups in Your Environment

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Using Ansible Modules to Manage Users and Groups in Your Environment

While many environments have some sort of central authentication, there's still use cases for managing users on servers outside of that. This lab will help drive home managing users and groups with Ansible.

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Lab Info

Level

Intermediate

Last updated

Aug 11, 2025

Duration

45m

Challenge

Ensure the 'backups' Group Exists with the Correct GID on All Servers
This section of your playbook should look something like this:
```
---
- name: verify group exists
 hosts: all
 become: yes

 tasks:
  - group: 
     gid: 12310
     name: backups
     state: present
```
Challenge

Remove the 'old_backup' User on All Servers
You can add this section to the existing playbook:
```
   - user:
     name: old_backup
     state: absent
```
Challenge

Create the 'new_backup' User on All Servers with the Required Settings
You can add this section to your existing playbook:
```
   - user:
     name: new_backup
     uid: 12427
     shell: /bin/false
     password_lock: yes
     groups: backups
```

Challenge

Create the New Group and Add the 'new_backup' User

Your complete playbook should look similar to the following:

---
- name: verify group exists
 hosts: all
 become: yes

 tasks:
  - group: 
     gid: 12310
     name: backups
     state: present
  - group:
     gid: 12311
     name: new_backups
     state: present
  - user:
     name: old_backup
     state: absent
  - user:
     name: new_backup
     uid: 12427
     shell: /bin/false
     password_lock: yes
     groups: backups, new_backups

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