3 Nov
2023
3 Nov
'23
12:05 p.m.
I've just installed a new VPS using the ubuntu-jammy image, and with the
new (likely not that new, but last VPS was pretty old) cloud-init
install it creates a default user of ubuntu. I want to change that to
something else, but haven't needed to do that before, so thought I'd
check if there are any gotchas that will come back to bite me down the
line. As far as I can tell the best way to do it is to use:
usermod -l newusernam -m -d /home/newusername oldusername
Clearly from a different account, and with this being a clean new
install there shouldn't be anything in terms of cron files to mess with.
There will be a group name to change too though. Is there anything else,
or a better way to do this?
--
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=============================================================================
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3 Nov
3 Nov
3:38 p.m.
Hello,
On Fri, Nov 03, 2023 at 12:05:14PM +0000, Paul Tansom via BitFolk Users wrote:
Is there anything else, or a better way to do this?
I'd probably just create a new user and lock the "ubuntu" user.
Don't forget to put the new user into the "sudo" group so it can use
sudo.
Thanks,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
8:33 p.m.
Andy said:
I'd probably just create a new user and lock the "ubuntu" user.
Is this something that cloud-init can be told not to do?
Certainly when I last started a Ubuntu VPS with 'a big US-based VPS
vendor', it only came up with root rather than ubuntu as well.
If you could change it not to have a default user, it would be good...
Ian
4 Nov
4 Nov
9:20 a.m.
Hi,
On Fri, Nov 03, 2023 at 08:33:29PM +0000, Ian via BitFolk Users wrote:
Is this something that cloud-init can be told not to
do?
I think so, and also it can execute arbitrary code at various steps,
but…
Certainly when I last started a Ubuntu VPS with 'a
big US-based VPS
vendor', it only came up with root rather than ubuntu as well.
If you could change it not to have a default user, it would be good...
For basically its entire existence Ubuntu has forced the creation
and use of an additional non-privileged user account and discouraged
direct use of the root account. If Akamai or whoever is providing a
default image of Ubuntu that only has a root user, that would be
a surprising and strange departure from normal behaviour for most
Ubuntu users. In general I want to keep things as close to a default
install as possible. We would get more confusion and requests to put
it back to default than there are to not have the non-root user.
So then one might ask if we could give people the option of changing
what the initial user name is, and we certainly could, but I would
have to ask what the point is. If we have to ask whether you want
the default initial user name, then if not what user name you DO
want, and then if password auth is to be allowed what the password
should be, well… it's not a lot more key strokes to just type the
three commands needed to create a new user and disable the "ubuntu"
one.
$ sudo adduser jbloggs
$ sudo usermod -a -G sudo jbloggs
$ sudo usermod -L ubuntu
(THe approach of renaming the user and home directory may be better
if one wanted to retain the SSH authorized_keys etc.)
Rather than add complexity for everyone in order to satisfy
particular minority requests, I think it is better to just provide
something that works closely to upstream defaults. Users can then
customise it starting from a known baseline, preferably with their
own choice of config management.
I think I would be more receptive to users wanting to provide their
own cloud-init or Debian preseed data if those were popular
requests. However the trend has been to move away from more
OS-specific bootstrapping methods in favour of getting a basic image
up and running and then having config management of choice configure
it. cloud-init sits somewhere in the middle, as it is a lot more
cross-platform.
Thanks,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
1:10 p.m.
Hi Paul
On 03.11.23 13:05, Paul Tansom via BitFolk Users wrote:
I've just installed a new VPS using the
ubuntu-jammy image, and with
the new (likely not that new, but last VPS was pretty old) cloud-init
install it creates a default user of ubuntu. I want to change that to
something else, but haven't needed to do that before, so thought I'd
check if there are any gotchas that will come back to bite me down the
line. As far as I can tell the best way to do it is to use:
usermod -l newusernam -m -d /home/newusername oldusername
Clearly from a different account, and with this being a clean new
install there shouldn't be anything in terms of cron files to mess
with. There will be a group name to change too though. Is there
anything else, or a better way to do this?
Since I don't have to cope with some hypothetical future consequences I
say: Just give it a go.
I'd write in my install log something meaningful about this. In case my
system would start to behave strangely some days after initial setup I'd
go back to my install logs and would start investigate. Of course there
is a high probability I would not remember I took these notes at this
point in time.
LGS
3:03 p.m.
Hello,
On Sat, Nov 04, 2023 at 02:10:20PM +0100, Samuel Bächler via BitFolk Users wrote:
I'd write in my install log something meaningful
about this. In case my
system would start to behave strangely some days after initial setup I'd go
back to my install logs and would start investigate.
Just to be clear, I do not believe that the initial user as created
by cloud-init on Ubuntu is used for any package on Ubuntu. It is
just that there needs to be SOME user for you to actually log in, as
ubuntu doesn't use root for logins. On Red Hat images they chose
"cloud-user". On Arch they chose "arch". As far as I know it's
just
arbitrary and there would be no consequences from changing it or
deleting it.
Thanks,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
3:11 p.m.
Having had to change the default cloud-init user from "ubuntu" to
"debian"
on a number of machines and disk images recently for reasons of infuriating
consistency, I'm pretty certain you're right. The default user doesn't need
to be called ubuntu for the thing to work, and changing it has caused us
zero issues.
On Sat, 4 Nov 2023, 15:03 Andy Smith via BitFolk Users, <
users(a)mailman.bitfolk.com> wrote:
Hello,
On Sat, Nov 04, 2023 at 02:10:20PM +0100, Samuel Bächler via BitFolk Users
wrote:
or send an email to
<users-leave(a)mailman.bitfolk.com>
I'd write in my install log something
meaningful about this. In case my
system would start to behave strangely some days after initial setup I'd
go
back to my install logs and would start
investigate.
Just to be clear, I do not believe that the initial user as created
by cloud-init on Ubuntu is used for any package on Ubuntu. It is
just that there needs to be SOME user for you to actually log in, as
ubuntu doesn't use root for logins. On Red Hat images they chose
"cloud-user". On Arch they chose "arch". As far as I know it's
just
arbitrary and there would be no consequences from changing it or
deleting it.
Thanks,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
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6 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
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Andy Smith -
Ashleigh Crosby -
Ian -
Paul Tansom -
Samuel Bächler