Using chef (solo) how can I set the root user's password?

Question

I'm using the user cookbook, which is working fine for all other user accounts.

I'm able to populate the root user's authorized_keys file with the keys listed in the data bag, however the password is remaining unset.

Here's the contents of my data bag (data_bags/users/root.json) for the root user:

{
  "id": "root",
  "uid": 0,
  "home": "/root",
  "home_dir_mode": "0700",
  "password": "shadowpasswordhash",
  "ssh_keys": [
    "ssh-rsa averylongkey"    
  ],
  "ssh_keygen": false
}

Answer 1

It could be a bug in that cookbook.

I'd use the "official" community cookbook (http://community.opscode.com/cookbooks/users) maintained by Seth Vargo rather than that one.

For the record, I successfully use the standard user resource to manage the root user password. Given the sensitivity, it might be better to handle the root account separately from other user accounts.

---

For example, you can use the built-in user resource set the root password like this:

  password_hash = ...

  user "Setting root password" do
    username 'root'
    password password_hash
    action :modify
  end

Setting an SSH key entails making sure that the /root/.ssh/ directory exists, and has the correct permissions, and then creating /root/.ssh/authorized_keys containing the public key and with the correct permissions. Something like this:

 public_key = ...

 directory "/root/.ssh" do
    owner "root"
    mode 0700
 end

 file "/root/.ssh/authorized_keys" do
    owner "root"
    mode "600"
    content public_key
 end