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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 platform
Lab Info
Level
Intermediate
Last updated
Aug 11, 2025
Duration
45m

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Table of Contents
  1. 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
    
  2. Challenge

    Remove the 'old_backup' User on All Servers

    You can add this section to the existing playbook:

       - user:
         name: old_backup
         state: absent
    
  3. 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
    
  4. 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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