Puppet Exec fails executing useradd

Question

From what I understand, puppetd runs as root. As root, I launch

 puppetd --onetime --no-daemonize --verbose

So I don't understand why this doesn't work:

exec { "useradd -m testuser":
       path => "/bin:/usr/bin",
     }

I just get:

...Exec[useradd -m testuser]/returns: change from notrun to 0 failed:useradd -m testuser returned 1 instead of one of [0] at...

If I execute the command directly, it works just fine.

Any ideas?

PS: exec { "touch /root/a.test":} is successful, so it is indeed executing as root.

PS2: I get the exact same problem when executing "apt-get autoremove"

Answer 1

Well in most systems useradd will be in one of the sbin folders rather than /bin or /usr/bin. your path should be "/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin",. though this solution is rather horible i would use the user type rather than an exec it will give you much better management of users on a host (checks on pw and existance requires etc)

@user {
  "testuser":
    uid => ,
    gid =>,
    password => #hash of password,
    home => ,
    groups => ,
}

this is a virtual resource and can be added to your host by realize ( User[testuser]) allowing it to be referenced multiple times

it's a nice simple solution

Answer 2

Try running the command with:

exec { "useradd -m testuser":
  path => "/bin:/usr/bin",
  logoutput => true,
}

And see what it says. It should give you error on the command line now. Also 'on_failure' is another option which only outputs when the command fails. I usually do:

Exec {
  logoutput => on_failure,
}

As a default so all my commands output something meaningful globally if they fail.

But normally - you would use the 'user' resource instead:

user { "myusername":
  ensure => present,
  managehome => true,
}

Well documented here alone with other resource types:

https://puppet.com/docs/puppet/latest/types/user.html

Answer 3

It works but does it return 1 instead of 0 ? Try running echo $? after that useradd command.

You tend to get better error messages by using the built in Puppet types rather than exec like this:

user { "foo":
  ensure => present,
  uid => 1001,
  password => '<some password hash>',
  shell => "/bin/bash",
  home => "/home/foo",
  groups =>  ["foogroup"],
  managehome => true,
}

Is there any reason you're using exec instead of doing that ?

Answer 4

You need to make sure you have the Ruby Shadow gem in order to work with /etc/shadow

sudo apt-get install libshadow-ruby1.8

or in redhat/fedora

sudo yum install ruby-shadow