htpasswd – manage user files for basic authentication

Synopsis

  • Add and remove username/password entries in a password file using htpasswd.

  • This is used by web servers such as Apache and Nginx for basic authentication.

Requirements

The below requirements are needed on the host that executes this module.

  • passlib>=1.6

Parameters

Parameter Choices/Defaults Comments
attributes
string
added in 2.3
The attributes the resulting file or directory should have.
To get supported flags look at the man page for chattr on the target system.
This string should contain the attributes in the same order as the one displayed by lsattr.
The = operator is assumed as default, otherwise + or - operators need to be included in the string.

aliases: attr
create
boolean
    Choices:
  • no
  • yes ←
Used with state=present. If specified, the file will be created if it does not already exist. If set to "no", will fail if the file does not exist
crypt_scheme
-
    Choices:
  • apr_md5_crypt ←
  • des_crypt
  • ldap_sha1
  • plaintext
Encryption scheme to be used. As well as the four choices listed here, you can also use any other hash supported by passlib, such as md5_crypt and sha256_crypt, which are linux passwd hashes. If you do so the password file will not be compatible with Apache or Nginx
group
string
Name of the group that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown.
mode
string
The permissions the resulting file or directory should have.
For those used to /usr/bin/chmod remember that modes are actually octal numbers. You must either add a leading zero so that Ansible's YAML parser knows it is an octal number (like 0644 or 01777) or quote it (like '644' or '1777') so Ansible receives a string and can do its own conversion from string into number.
Giving Ansible a number without following one of these rules will end up with a decimal number which will have unexpected results.
As of Ansible 1.8, the mode may be specified as a symbolic mode (for example, u+rwx or u=rw,g=r,o=r).
name
- / required
User name to add or remove

aliases: username
owner
string
Name of the user that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown.
password
-
Password associated with user.
Must be specified if user does not exist yet.
path
- / required
Path to the file that contains the usernames and passwords

aliases: dest, destfile
selevel
string
Default:
"s0"
The level part of the SELinux file context.
This is the MLS/MCS attribute, sometimes known as the range.
When set to _default, it will use the level portion of the policy if available.
serole
string
The role part of the SELinux file context.
When set to _default, it will use the role portion of the policy if available.
setype
string
The type part of the SELinux file context.
When set to _default, it will use the type portion of the policy if available.
seuser
string
The user part of the SELinux file context.
By default it uses the system policy, where applicable.
When set to _default, it will use the user portion of the policy if available.
state
-
    Choices:
  • present ←
  • absent
Whether the user entry should be present or not
unsafe_writes
boolean
added in 2.2
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
Influence when to use atomic operation to prevent data corruption or inconsistent reads from the target file.
By default this module uses atomic operations to prevent data corruption or inconsistent reads from the target files, but sometimes systems are configured or just broken in ways that prevent this. One example is docker mounted files, which cannot be updated atomically from inside the container and can only be written in an unsafe manner.
This option allows Ansible to fall back to unsafe methods of updating files when atomic operations fail (however, it doesn't force Ansible to perform unsafe writes).
IMPORTANT! Unsafe writes are subject to race conditions and can lead to data corruption.

Notes

Note

  • This module depends on the passlib Python library, which needs to be installed on all target systems.

  • On Debian, Ubuntu, or Fedora: install python-passlib.

  • On RHEL or CentOS: Enable EPEL, then install python-passlib.

Examples

# Add a user to a password file and ensure permissions are set
- htpasswd:
    path: /etc/nginx/passwdfile
    name: janedoe
    password: '9s36?;fyNp'
    owner: root
    group: www-data
    mode: 0640

# Remove a user from a password file
- htpasswd:
    path: /etc/apache2/passwdfile
    name: foobar
    state: absent

# Add a user to a password file suitable for use by libpam-pwdfile
- htpasswd:
    path: /etc/mail/passwords
    name: alex
    password: oedu2eGh
    crypt_scheme: md5_crypt

Status

Authors

  • Ansible Core Team

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