users

Within an installation section, the users sub-section describes extra operating system users to create as part of the machine image build process.

The definition of a users section is:

"users": [
    ...the list of users goes here.
]

The valid keys to use within a user are:

• fullName (mandatory): a string providing the full name of the user. The same value as name can be used.
• homeDir (mandatory): a string providing the home directory of the user. Recommended default: /home/username where username is the same value as name
• name (mandatory): a string providing the name of the user. The name cannot contain any spaces.
• password (optional): a string providing the user password.
• encrypted (optional): a boolean to determine whether password is encrypted or not. The default is false.
• primaryGroup (optional): a string providing the user’s primary group. If no primary group is given, then the primary group is the same as name.
• shell (mandatory): a string providing the default shell environment for the user. Recommended default is /bin/bash.
• secondaryGroups (optional): a string providing one or more group names separated by a comma (,).
• systemUser (optional): a boolean determining if the user is a system user.
• userId (optional): an integer providing the unique Id of the user. This number must be greater than 1000. If the user is a system user, then this number must be greater than 201.

Examples

Basic Example

The following example provides the minimal information to create users during a build. As no userId is specified, the next available user Id numbers are used automatically during the build of the machine image. Furthermore, as no primary group is provided, the primary group will have the same name as the user name.

{
  "users": [
    {
      "name": "joris",
      "fullName": "joris",
      "homeDir": "/home/joris",
      "shell": "/bin/bash"
    },
    {
      "name": "yann",
      "fullName": "yann dorcet",
      "homeDir": "/home/ydorcet",
      "shell": "/bin/bash"
    }
  ]
}

More Complex Example

This example shows how you can provide group information, set a user Id and make a user a system user.

{
  "users": [
    {
      "name": "joris",
      "fullName": "joris",
      "userId": 2222,
      "primaryGroup": "joris",
      "secondaryGroups": "dev,france",
      "homeDir": "/home/joris",
      "shell": "/bin/bash"
    },
    {
      "name": "yann",
      "fullName": "yann dorcet",
      "systemUser": true,
      "userId": 400,
      "primaryGroup": "yann",
      "secondaryGroups": "admin,dev,france",
      "homeDir": "/home/ydorcet",
      "shell": "/sbin/nologin"
    }
  ]
}

Warning

By setting /sbin/nologin the user will not be able to log via the machine’s console.