Role default_group

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Summary

Creates a default group for all users of a workspace. Creates the group, add all regular users to it, and ensures that new users are also added to it.

Requires

Debian/Ubuntu operating system.

Description

1. Adds the group with the desired name and gid.
2. Modifies /etc/security/group.conf so that the group is added by PAM whenever a user logs in.
3. Takes all existing regular users and adds them to group.
4. If default_group_use_cron is _false_: Adds the group to the EXTRA_GROUPS instruction in /etc/adduser.conf so that new users created with /sbin/adduser (a Debian/Ubuntu tool, not to be confused with useradd) are automatically added to the new group.
   • also ensures that existing groups in EXTRA_GROUPS are kept. On SRC workspaces, this includes the davfs2 group by default.
5. If default_group_use_cron is _false_: installs a cron script that ensures all regular users are member of the default group.

Variables

• dict default_group_group:
  • default_group_group.groupname: name of the group to create
  • default_group_group.gid`: # optional. gid (numeric) of the group
• default_group_use_cron: Boolean. When true (default), will use a cronjob to add all regular users to the default group. When false, will instead use /sbin/adduser config to achieve the same result. However, the latter only works for users added with adduser, and not with useradd – the default cron strategy is therefore more robust.

See also

History

2023 Written by Dawa Ometto (Utrecht University)

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