community.general.htpasswd module – Manage user files for basic authentication

Note

This module is part of the community.general collection (version 5.8.3).

You might already have this collection installed if you are using the ansible package. It is not included in ansible-core. To check whether it is installed, run ansible-galaxy collection list.

To install it, use: ansible-galaxy collection install community.general. You need further requirements to be able to use this module, see Requirements for details.

To use it in a playbook, specify: community.general.htpasswd.

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

Comments

attributes

aliases: attr

string

The attributes the resulting filesystem object 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.

create

boolean

Used with state=present. If specified, the file will be created if it does not already exist. If set to false, will fail if the file does not exist

Choices:

  • false

  • true ← (default)

crypt_scheme

string

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

Some of the available choices might be: apr_md5_crypt, des_crypt, ldap_sha1, plaintext

Default: "apr_md5_crypt"

group

string

Name of the group that should own the filesystem object, as would be fed to chown.

When left unspecified, it uses the current group of the current user unless you are root, in which case it can preserve the previous ownership.

mode

any

The permissions the resulting filesystem object 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).

If mode is not specified and the destination filesystem object does not exist, the default umask on the system will be used when setting the mode for the newly created filesystem object.

If mode is not specified and the destination filesystem object does exist, the mode of the existing filesystem object will be used.

Specifying mode is the best way to ensure filesystem objects are created with the correct permissions. See CVE-2020-1736 for further details.

name

aliases: username

string / required

User name to add or remove

owner

string

Name of the user that should own the filesystem object, as would be fed to chown.

When left unspecified, it uses the current user unless you are root, in which case it can preserve the previous ownership.

password

string

Password associated with user.

Must be specified if user does not exist yet.

path

aliases: dest, destfile

path / required

Path to the file that contains the usernames and passwords

selevel

string

The level part of the SELinux filesystem object 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 filesystem object context.

When set to _default, it will use the role portion of the policy if available.

setype

string

The type part of the SELinux filesystem object context.

When set to _default, it will use the type portion of the policy if available.

seuser

string

The user part of the SELinux filesystem object 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

string

Whether the user entry should be present or not

Choices:

  • "present" ← (default)

  • "absent"

unsafe_writes

boolean

Influence when to use atomic operation to prevent data corruption or inconsistent reads from the target filesystem object.

By default this module uses atomic operations to prevent data corruption or inconsistent reads from the target filesystem objects, but sometimes systems are configured or just broken in ways that prevent this. One example is docker mounted filesystem objects, 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 filesystem objects 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.

Choices:

  • false ← (default)

  • true

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

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

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

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

Authors

  • Ansible Core Team