How to create a ssh key for a user using data bags in Chef

Question

All,

I have a user that I am creating using recipe in Chef. How can I create a ssh key for the user using data bags in chef.

the recipe in default.rb is,

user "abc" do
  home "/home/abc"
  action[:create]
  mode 775

Is the SSH pubkey in the data bag? Or do you want to put the keypair (bad idea?) that you generate via Chef into the data bag? — StephenKing, Sep 23 '16 at 07:01
Do a search on https://supermarket.chef.io there's a bunch of cookbooks around this. — Tensibai, Sep 23 '16 at 07:30
Example using the "users" community cookbook: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/39008803/chef-how-to-use-a-list-of-attributes-in-a-script/39019127#39019127 — Mark O'Connor, Sep 23 '16 at 07:34
@StephenKing : What is the best approach? Can you suggest how data bags can be used. — cloudbud, Sep 23 '16 at 07:35

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 24 '16 at 01:53

The user resource only manages creating a user, as in the /etc/passwd entry. For managing ancillary stuff like SSH keys or sudo configurations you would need additional code. There are some community cookbooks that help with this, but you would have to evaluate if they meet your needs. User management tends to be very different for each organization so I encourage people to consider writing something themselves.

How to create a ssh key for a user using data bags in Chef

1 Answers1