Change the User Primary Group on Linux with Ansible

Learn how to use Ansible to change a user's primary group on Linux systems with the user module. Streamline user management and ensure consistent group assignments across your infrastructure.

How to Change the User Primary Group on Linux 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 changes the User Primary Group on Linux

> ansible.builtin.user Manage user accounts

Today we're talking about 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.

For Windows, use the ansible.windows.win_user module instead.

Parameters

name _string_ - username

group _string_ - user's primary group (only one)

groups _list / elements=string_ - list of groups the user will be added to

append _boolean_ - no/yes - If yes, add the user to the groups specified in groups. If no, replace.

This module has many parameters, let me highlight the useful for our use case.

The only required is "name", which is the username.

The primary group is specified in the "group" parameter, every user need to be part of only one group.

The "groups" parameter specifies the list of additional groups that the user will be added to. This type of group sometimes is called also "secondary", "additional" or "supplementary".

The parameter "append" is very important. With the "yes" option, the user is going to be added to the specified groups.

With the "no" option, all group members are going to be overwritten with the specified groups.

So to Conclusion is you specify the "no" option you are going to lose all the previous group associations, please be careful!

Links

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/ansible/builtin/user_module.html

## Playbook

How to change the User Primary Group on Linux with Ansible Playbook.

code

user_group_changeprimary.yml

``yaml


---
name: user module Playbook
  hosts: all
  become: true
  vars:
    myuser: "example"
    mygroup: "users"
  tasks:
    - name: change primary group
      ansible.builtin.user:
        name: "{{ myuser }}"
        group: "{{ mygroup }}"



execution

`bash


$ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/demo/inventory users_and_groups/user_group_changeprimary.yml
PLAY [user module Playbook] *
TASK [Gathering Facts] 
ok: [demo.example.com]
TASK [change primare group] *
changed: [demo.example.com]
PLAY RECAP **
demo.example.com           : ok=2    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0
ansible-pilot $



before execution

``bash

$ ssh [email protected]

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