charm-local-users

Description

Charm Local Users is a subordinate charm for creating and managing local user accounts and groups on principal units. It can be related to any application using the juju-info interface.

It can be used to set up an unprivileged user for a hardware inventory system or grant access to staff members. It's intended for scenarios where you need to manage a relatively small number of users - 1-10 accounts rather than hundreds.

Privileged users and management of privileges are out of scope. Integration with external identity providers, such as LDAP or AD, is also out of scope.

Usage

Create a configuration file:

cat config-local-users.yaml
local-users:
  group: mygroup
  users: |
    alice;Alice;ssh-rsa ABC alice@desktop
    bob;Bob;ssh-rsa XYZ bob@laptop

Deploy the application:

juju deploy --config config-local-users.yaml local-users

Relate to any principal charm application of your choice, e.g.

juju relate local-users ubuntu

Charm can also be configured after deployment.

Example: to remove bob's account, create an updated user list file user.lst that doesn't include Bob's account anymore and simply update the config:

cat user.lst
alice;Alice;ssh-rsa ABC alice@desktop

juju config local-users users=@user.lst

The charm will enter a blocked state if you try to add a user account that already exists but isn't a member of the managed group. If you're sure that you want to add the pre-existing account to the managed group anyway, making it a charm managed account from now, you can run:

juju config local-users allow-existing-users=true

Home directories of removed users will be backed up in the location specified in the backup-path config option before being removed.

Relations

This charm that can be related to any principal charm application using the juju-info interface.

Contributing

Please see the Juju SDK docs for guidelines on enhancements to this charm following best practice guidelines, and CONTRIBUTING.md for developer guidance.