Managing users' SSH access

A sensible approach to access control for servers is to use named user accounts with passphrase-protected SSH keys, rather than having users share an account with a widely known password. Puppet makes this easy to manage thanks to the built-in ssh_authorized_key type.

To combine this with virtual users, as described in the previous section, you can create a define, which includes both the user and ssh_authorized_key resources. This will also come in handy when adding customization files and other resources to each user.

How to do it...

Follow these steps to extend your virtual users' class to include SSH access:

1. Create a new module ssh_user to contain our ssh_user definition. Create the modules/ssh_user/manifests/init.pp file as follows:

   define ssh_user($key,$keytype) {
     user { $name:
       ensure     => present,
     }
   
     file { "/home/${name}":
       ensure => directory,
       mode   => '0700',
       owner  => $name,
       require => User["$name"]
     }
     file {...