This is a text-only version of the following page on https://raymii.org:

This is a text-only version of the following page on https://raymii.org:
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Title : Ansible - sudoers safety and sanity checking in playbook
Author : Remy van Elst
Date : 23-03-2013
URL : https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Ansible_-_Sudo_Safety_and_Sanity_Checks.html
Format : Markdown/HTML
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Using Ansible to manage the /etc/sudoers file is fine, except when you have a
syntax error in your template. This method helps you to only deploy a correct
sudoers file.

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I manage the `sudo` config (`/etc/sudoers/`) via Ansible. My sudo playbook
creates an admin group, adds me to that admin group, and sets some variables in
`/etc/sudoers/`. I do not have a sudoers template file, because I created the
playbook at a client which has various different sudoers files, which they do
not want to have changed ,because of different nagios checks that needed sudo on
different hosts. However, if you start of clean, then a template file for
`/etc/sudoers` is the best choice.

This is the playbook:

---
- hosts: all
sudo: True
user: remy
connection: ssh # or paramiko

vars:
distro: {{ ansible_distribution }}
pkg_mgr: {{ ansible_pkg_mgr }}
pbname: {{ inventory_hostname }}

tasks:

- name: Copy sudoers file for safety
command: cp -f /etc/sudoers /etc/sudoers.tmp

- name: Create sudoers file backup
command: cp -f /etc/sudoers /etc/sudoers.bak

- name: Create admins group
group: name=admins system=yes state=present

- name: make sure we can sudo as admin group
lineinfile: dest=/etc/sudoers.tmp state=present regexp='^%admin' line='%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL'

- name: also make sure ssh-agent works via sudo
lineinfile: dest=/etc/sudoers.tmp state=present regexp='^Defaults env_keep\+\=SSH_AUTH_SOCK' line='Defaults env_keep+=SSH_AUTH_SOCK'

- name: Final sudoers file check
shell: visudo -q -c -f /etc/sudoers.tmp && cp -f /etc/sudoers.tmp /etc/sudoers

* We create the `admins` group, to which all users that need sudo are added by other playbooks.

* We copy the remote sudoers file to a temp one and perform all actions on the temp sudoers file. We also back up the sudoers file.

* We enable the `admins` group to sudo

* We make sure `ssh-agent` works via sudo. This was used for a git repository on the root user account, to show our own names in the commits.

* Finally we use `visudo` to check if the file is correct, and if so we copy the file over the "original" sudos file.

By using the temp file we make sure we don't have any syntax errors and lock
ourselves out of machines, needing to use ILO/DRAC to reset passwords and such.
Been there, done that, not funny at all.

[1]: https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=7435ae6b8212

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