Public bug reported: **Problem Description** The systems I manage are subjected to specific security-hardening guidance that causes unwanted alerts for the default-user created by cloud init. Specifically, because cloud-init creates the default-user with a userid in the non "system" uid-range, the security-hardening validators expect that the default-user created by cloud-init will have password-aging attributes set. As the default-user account acts as a "break-glass" maintenance account, having password-aging is not generally not desirable.
While cloud-init provides the `system` parameter as a seeming out for this, using this parameter results in an account with no ${HOME} and, by extension, no ${HOME}/.ssh/authorized keys ...breaking the ability to configure the default-user account for key-based logins. Tried using the `no_create_home` parameter and setting its value to `false` in hopes of overriding the `system` parameter's default behavior, but it seems like when `system` is set, `no_create_home` is wholly ignored. I could probably use the `uid` parameter instead of the `system` parameter, but I fear that if I set a value like '500', I may cause problems for applications whose installers expect to be able to create a service-account with the same uid ('500' being an example value rather than a specific value). **Cloud Provider** AWS **Version Info** cloud-init 18.5 from RHEL/CentOS 7 cloud-init-18.5-3 RPM ** Affects: cloud-init Importance: Undecided Status: New -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Yahoo! Engineering Team, which is subscribed to cloud-init. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1864728 Title: Unable to create interactive "system" user Status in cloud-init: New Bug description: **Problem Description** The systems I manage are subjected to specific security-hardening guidance that causes unwanted alerts for the default-user created by cloud init. Specifically, because cloud-init creates the default-user with a userid in the non "system" uid-range, the security-hardening validators expect that the default-user created by cloud-init will have password-aging attributes set. As the default-user account acts as a "break-glass" maintenance account, having password-aging is not generally not desirable. While cloud-init provides the `system` parameter as a seeming out for this, using this parameter results in an account with no ${HOME} and, by extension, no ${HOME}/.ssh/authorized keys ...breaking the ability to configure the default-user account for key-based logins. Tried using the `no_create_home` parameter and setting its value to `false` in hopes of overriding the `system` parameter's default behavior, but it seems like when `system` is set, `no_create_home` is wholly ignored. I could probably use the `uid` parameter instead of the `system` parameter, but I fear that if I set a value like '500', I may cause problems for applications whose installers expect to be able to create a service-account with the same uid ('500' being an example value rather than a specific value). **Cloud Provider** AWS **Version Info** cloud-init 18.5 from RHEL/CentOS 7 cloud-init-18.5-3 RPM To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/cloud-init/+bug/1864728/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~yahoo-eng-team Post to : yahoo-eng-team@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~yahoo-eng-team More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp