Unix-accounts

Unix-accounts makes it possible to store accounts globally in one common database, instead of manually keeping them synchronized locally on each computers.

If having a shared network filesystem as example, the accounts (name, id) needs to be synchronized between the computers. This does not scale well since the effort to administrate accounts increases with the amount of computers times the amount of accounts.

One solution is to to use ldap. However, the additional complexity to configure the system and managing the accounts might not always balance up the gain. The goal with this project has been to keep the account administration and system configuration as simple and user-friendly as possible.

Unix-accounts uses a sqlite-database* as storage backend and provides a commandline interface to manage the accounts. It implements the nss api for passwd, group, shadow. Simple and minimal, nothing more, nothing less. The nss api is exposed over http(s) and is intended to be used with plugin https://github.com/1nfiniteloop/nss-http.

*The storage backend can be switched to another sql-database, it is portable and easy to replace since sqlalchemy is used.

Note:

This database is not intended to replace the regular account mechanism with /etc/{passwd,shadow,group}. It extends the database lookups by using the name service switch (nss) api. See more @ http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man5/nsswitch.conf.5.html and https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/NSS-Basics.html.

The Name Service Switch perform lookups only, example on getent {group,passwd,shadow}. This means that changing account data is not part of the nss api. Tools for changing accounts such as passwd, useradd, groupadd is implemented to manipulate /etc/{group,passwd,shadow} directly. Account administration is therefore done on the same computer as the unix-accounts server is on, using its provided commandline interface.

Usage

Install

Use docker-container (preferred), which starts the server as entrypoint:

docker run -it \
  --name unix-accounts \
  --volume=unix-accounts:/var/opt/unix-accounts \
  --network=lan \
  1nfiniteloop/unix-accounts:latest \
    --host=0.0.0.0

Or install with pip:

pip install unix-accounts

Server

If installed with pip: Data is stored in /var/opt/unix-accounts. Create this folder and give permissions accordingly, or provide alternative path with: --db=<path-to-sqlite-db> --token-db=<path-to-token-db> on invocation.

Create a new token to give api access to passwords:

unix-accounts-server --generate-token

Start server with:

unix-accounts-server

Accounts can now be accessed with:

curl -i \
    -H "Authorization: bearer MOE66ljNwXXF8R81OqGrDfbWmuZUjmlarDvdZt4X1dQ" \
    http://localhost:8025/api/{user,group,password}?name=foo

Commandline interface

If installed with pip, access cli with:

unix-accounts

If using docker-container, access cli with:

docker exec -it unix-accounts unix-accounts

General usage:

unix-accounts {group,user,group-member,password}

Use flag --help to see all options.

The commandline interface enters interactive mode if used without arguments. This is more efficient since application loads the database once at start, instead of on each command invocation.

Example: Add user

unix-accounts# user add foo --uid 10000
+-----------+-------+-------+-------+-----------+-----------+------------------+
| User name | Id    | Group | Gecos | Home dir  | Shell     | Group membership |
+-----------+-------+-------+-------+-----------+-----------+------------------+
| foo       | 10000 | foo   |       | /home/foo | /bin/bash |                  |
+-----------+-------+-------+-------+-----------+-----------+------------------+

Example: add user to a group

unix-accounts# group-member add foo developer
+------------+-------+-----------------+
| Group name | Id    | User membership |
+------------+-------+-----------------+
| developer  | 10001 | foo             |
+------------+-------+-----------------+

Example: set new password

unix-accounts# password foo
New password:

Develop

Run locally

Change to directory unix-accounts/src.

• Run unittests with python3 -m unittest discover -s . -p "*_test.py".
• Start server with python3 -m unix_accounts.bin.server [flags].
• Start interactive commandline interface with python3 -m unix_accounts.bin.cli [flags].

Build package

1. Make sure package build is available, or install with

    python3 -m pip install build
   

2. Build source and dist packages with:

    python3 -m build --wheel --sdist
   

3. The built wheel distribution is located in dist/, install with

    pip install dist/unix_accounts-1.0.0-py3-none-any.whl
   

Build docker container

Note: The docker build uses the local built python package.

docker build --tag 1nfiniteloop/unix-accounts:latest .