postgresql_user – Add or remove a user (role) from a PostgreSQL server instance

Synopsis

  • Adds or removes a user (role) from a PostgreSQL server instance (“cluster” in PostgreSQL terminology) and, optionally, grants the user access to an existing database or tables. A user is a role with login privilege (see https://www.postgresql.org/docs/11/role-attributes.html for more information).

  • The fundamental function of the module is to create, or delete, users from a PostgreSQL instances. Privilege assignment, or removal, is an optional step, which works on one database at a time. This allows for the module to be called several times in the same module to modify the permissions on different databases, or to grant permissions to already existing users.

  • A user cannot be removed until all the privileges have been stripped from the user. In such situation, if the module tries to remove the user it will fail. To avoid this from happening the fail_on_user option signals the module to try to remove the user, but if not possible keep going; the module will report if changes happened and separately if the user was removed or not.

Requirements

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

  • psycopg2

Parameters

Parameter Choices/Defaults Comments
ca_cert
string
added in 2.3
Specifies the name of a file containing SSL certificate authority (CA) certificate(s).
If the file exists, the server's certificate will be verified to be signed by one of these authorities.

aliases: ssl_rootcert
conn_limit
integer
added in 2.4
Specifies the user (role) connection limit.
db
string
Name of database to connect to and where user's permissions will be granted.

aliases: login_db
encrypted
boolean
    Choices:
  • no
  • yes ←
Whether the password is stored hashed in the database.
Passwords can be passed already hashed or unhashed, and postgresql ensures the stored password is hashed when encrypted is set.
Note: Postgresql 10 and newer doesn't support unhashed passwords.
Previous to Ansible 2.6, this was no by default.
expires
string
The date at which the user's password is to expire.
If set to 'infinity', user's password never expire.
Note that this value should be a valid SQL date and time type.
fail_on_user
boolean
    Choices:
  • no
  • yes ←
If yes, fail when user (role) can't be removed. Otherwise just log and continue.

aliases: fail_on_role
login_host
string
Host running the database.
login_password
string
The password used to authenticate with.
login_unix_socket
string
Path to a Unix domain socket for local connections.
login_user
string
Default:
"postgres"
The username used to authenticate with.
name
string / required
Name of the user (role) to add or remove.

aliases: user
no_password_changes
boolean
added in 2.0
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
If yes, don't inspect database for password changes. Effective when pg_authid is not accessible (such as AWS RDS). Otherwise, make password changes as necessary.
password
string
Set the user's password, before 1.4 this was required.
Password can be passed unhashed or hashed (MD5-hashed).
Unhashed password will automatically be hashed when saved into the database if encrypted parameter is set, otherwise it will be save in plain text format.
When passing a hashed password it must be generated with the format 'str["md5"] + md5[ password + username ]', resulting in a total of 35 characters. An easy way to do this is echo "md5$(echo -n 'verysecretpasswordJOE' | md5sum | awk '{print $1}'").
Note that if the provided password string is already in MD5-hashed format, then it is used as-is, regardless of encrypted parameter.
port
integer
Default:
5432
Database port to connect to.

aliases: login_port
priv
string
Slash-separated PostgreSQL privileges string: priv1/priv2, where privileges can be defined for database ( allowed options - 'CREATE', 'CONNECT', 'TEMPORARY', 'TEMP', 'ALL'. For example CONNECT ) or for table ( allowed options - 'SELECT', 'INSERT', 'UPDATE', 'DELETE', 'TRUNCATE', 'REFERENCES', 'TRIGGER', 'ALL'. For example table:SELECT ). Mixed example of this string: CONNECT/CREATE/table1:SELECT/table2:INSERT.
role_attr_flags
string
    Choices:
  • [NO]SUPERUSER
  • [NO]CREATEROLE
  • [NO]CREATEDB
  • [NO]INHERIT
  • [NO]LOGIN
  • [NO]REPLICATION
  • [NO]BYPASSRLS
PostgreSQL user attributes string in the format: CREATEDB,CREATEROLE,SUPERUSER.
Note that '[NO]CREATEUSER' is deprecated.
To create a simple role for using it like a group, use NOLOGIN flag.
session_role
string
added in 2.8
Switch to session_role after connecting.
The specified session_role must be a role that the current login_user is a member of.
Permissions checking for SQL commands is carried out as though the session_role were the one that had logged in originally.
ssl_mode
string
added in 2.3
    Choices:
  • allow
  • disable
  • prefer ←
  • require
  • verify-ca
  • verify-full
Determines whether or with what priority a secure SSL TCP/IP connection will be negotiated with the server.
See https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/libpq-ssl.html for more information on the modes.
Default of prefer matches libpq default.
state
string
    Choices:
  • absent
  • present ←
The user (role) state.

Notes

Note

  • The module creates a user (role) with login privilege by default. Use NOLOGIN role_attr_flags to change this behaviour.

  • The default authentication assumes that you are either logging in as or sudo’ing to the postgres account on the host.

  • This module uses psycopg2, a Python PostgreSQL database adapter. You must ensure that psycopg2 is installed on the host before using this module. If the remote host is the PostgreSQL server (which is the default case), then PostgreSQL must also be installed on the remote host. For Ubuntu-based systems, install the postgresql, libpq-dev, and python-psycopg2 packages on the remote host before using this module.

  • If you specify PUBLIC as the user (role), then the privilege changes will apply to all users (roles). You may not specify password or role_attr_flags when the PUBLIC user is specified.

  • The ca_cert parameter requires at least Postgres version 8.4 and psycopg2 version 2.4.3.

  • The default authentication assumes that you are either logging in as or sudo’ing to the postgres account on the host.

  • This module uses psycopg2, a Python PostgreSQL database adapter. You must ensure that psycopg2 is installed on the host before using this module. If the remote host is the PostgreSQL server (which is the default case), then PostgreSQL must also be installed on the remote host. For Ubuntu-based systems, install the postgresql, libpq-dev, and python-psycopg2 packages on the remote host before using this module.

  • The ca_cert parameter requires at least Postgres version 8.4 and psycopg2 version 2.4.3.

Examples

- name: Connect to acme database, create django user, and grant access to database and products table
  postgresql_user:
    db: acme
    name: django
    password: ceec4eif7ya
    priv: "CONNECT/products:ALL"
    expires: "Jan 31 2020"

# Connect to default database, create rails user, set its password (MD5-hashed),
# and grant privilege to create other databases and demote rails from super user status if user exists
- name: Create rails user, set MD5-hashed password, grant privs
  postgresql_user:
    name: rails
    password: md59543f1d82624df2b31672ec0f7050460
    role_attr_flags: CREATEDB,NOSUPERUSER

- name: Connect to acme database and remove test user privileges from there
  postgresql_user:
    db: acme
    name: test
    priv: "ALL/products:ALL"
    state: absent
    fail_on_user: no

- name: Connect to test database, remove test user from cluster
  postgresql_user:
    db: test
    name: test
    priv: ALL
    state: absent

- name: Connect to acme database and set user's password with no expire date
  postgresql_user:
    db: acme
    name: django
    password: mysupersecretword
    priv: "CONNECT/products:ALL"
    expires: infinity

# Example privileges string format
# INSERT,UPDATE/table:SELECT/anothertable:ALL

- name: Connect to test database and remove an existing user's password
  postgresql_user:
    db: test
    user: test
    password: ""

Return Values

Common return values are documented here, the following are the fields unique to this module:

Key Returned Description
queries
list
added in 2.8
 always
List of executed queries.

Sample:
['CREATE USER "alice"', 'GRANT CONNECT ON DATABASE "acme" TO "alice"']


Status

  • This module is guaranteed to have no backward incompatible interface changes going forward. [stableinterface]

  • This module is maintained by the Ansible Community. [community]

Authors

  • Ansible Core Team

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