Puppet: Get users home directory

Solution 1:

Hm, i think there you'll need a facter modul to do that and a little hacky manifest file...

facter module: This will register facter variables for all users. like "home_root" or "home_apache".

require 'etc'

Etc.passwd { |user|

   Facter.add("home_#{user.name}") do
      setcode do
         user.dir
      end
   end

}

and then you can use them inside your manifest file like this:

$username = "root"
$home = "home_$username"
$home_path = inline_template("<%= scope.lookupvar('::$home') %>")

file { "$home_path/test.txt":
   content => "huhu",
}

Perhaps there is a better way, but i'm afraid not.

Solution 2:

I tried to find a solution for the exactly same problem, and it turned out it's best to take a slightly different approach.

Define home directory explicitly, for example:

user { $username:
    comment    => "comment",
    home       => "/home/${username}",
    managehome => false,
    # ...
}

When managehome is false, the home directory is not even created. So you have to specifically define it. It's often best to make a custom definition for the whole user:

define custom_user($username, $password) {
    user { $username:
        home     => "/home/${username}",
        password => $password,
        # etc.
    }
    file { "/home/${username}":
        ensure  => directory,
        owner   => $username,
        require => User[$username],
        # etc.
    }
}

You can add more parameters, for example $keyvalue, and create a keyfile if that parameter is given.

You can also define a global variable $home = "/home" (OS specific, if needed) and get home dir with "${home}/${username}".

Edit: Using hash to define user-specific home directories

More recent Puppet versions (>= 2.6) support hashes. It would be possible to define a hash containing username => /path/to/home mappings for each user:

$home = {
    normal_user => '/home/normal_user',
    backup      => '/var/backup',
    mysql       => '/var/lib/mysql'
}

For any username, it is then easy to get home directory with $home['username'].

Home directory hash with fallback

Most of the time, it would be best to have a "fallback default" if user does not exist in the hash. In theory this is possible, although syntax becomes a little cryptic and bloated:

$home = { ... }
$default_home = '/home'

user {$username:
    home => has_key($home, $username) ? {
                true => $home[$username], 
                false => "${default_home}/${username}" 
            }
    # ...
}