[SOLVED] Use chef to run bash passwd

Use chef to run bash passwd

I am having a hard time figuring out how to use chef to run a bash command (passwd)

I know how to set up the bash resource block but how do I set it up so that is will take the variable password = 'abc123'. The user I want to do it for is adminblah for this example.

bash 'analytics_password' do
  code <<-EOH
    sudo passwd adminblah
  EOH
end

I am not sure how to get the password variable into this.

Solution

There are a couple of ways you could achieve setting the user password. If you want to use the bash resource you could do this:

# Backslashes are escaped because of ruby
bash 'analytics_password' do
  code <<-EOH
    echo -e "#{password}\\n#{password}\\n" | passwd adminblah
  EOH
  sensitive true
end

The above echo replicates inputting then confirming the password if you ran this on the command line.

You could also look at using chpasswd instead (if available):

bash 'analytics_password' do
  code <<-EOH
    echo "adminblah:#{password}" | chpasswd
  EOH
  sensitive true
end

In both the above cases the sensitive property hides any potential output of the password in the Chef logs.

The best option would probably be looking at the user resource. This is a bit more complicated as you'll need to create a Password Shadow Hash (examples are provided in the link), but should be considered.