bash_user_skel

Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Module Description - What the module does and why it is useful
3. Setup - The basics of getting started with bash_user_skel
   • What bash_user_skel affects
   • Setup requirements
   • Beginning with bash_user_skel
4. Usage - Configuration options and additional functionality
5. Reference - An under-the-hood peek at what the module is doing and how
6. Limitations - OS compatibility, etc.
7. Development - Guide for contributing to the module

Overview

Populate a sysadmin's home directory with a set of consistent luxury bash configuration files. Files content is determined by this module rather then copying files already on the target system to ensure consistency.

Module Description

Provides:

• A pretty shell prompt for regular users and a red one for anyone logging in as root
• A colourful ls command showing sizes
• Enforced consistency (replaces ~/.bashrc)
• Extension point for local changes (~/.bash_custom)
• An easy way of fully setting up a local user with Puppet
• Method to distribute custom aliases and prompts to required users

Setup

What bash_user_skel affects

• Creates various dotfiles in the the user home directory, mirroring those in /etc/skel
• Since ~/.bashrc is managed by Puppet, we provide a means for users to add custom unmanaged code to their shell session by editing ~/.bash_custom

Beginning with bash_user_skel

The module provides a single defined resource type bash_user_skel which needs to be applied for each user you want configure. If your happy to accept the default prompt and alias settings, all you need is:

bash_user_skel { "username": }

Where username is the username you wish to apply the settings to. If you have a small list of users its probably easiest to keep this in hiera and feed the list to the defined resource type, otherwise for larger lists you could look towards a facter based solution or integration with LDAP.

The default settings assume a home directory under /home.

Usage

In cases where you would like to supply different prompts and aliases, or your user has an unusual home directory, you can configure this via the bash_user_skel resource's parameters:

bash_user_skel( "frank_furter":
    $home_dir = "/exports/users/frank_furter",
    $ps1      = "$",
    $aliases  = [
     "ll='/bin/ls -l'",
     "ld='/bin/ls -ld'",
    ],
) {

In this case, we have a custom home directory, a simplified prompt of just $ and a couple of aliases for ls.

Reference

• bash_user_skel - Install customised dotfiles in user home directories

Limitations

Only Debian and Ubuntu support right now. Should be easy to add other Unix like OS's

Development

PRs accepted