How can I run Ansible with root user and then change to another?

Question

I have my fresh Ubuntu server on Linode and I have a root password for that server.

Now my Ansible playbook is like this:

- hosts: linode
  sudo: true
  remote_user: user1
  roles:
     - role: common
     - role: apache2

I want to execute the playbook as user1, but thing is user1 does not exist yet and I don't want to run roles as root. I need to manually create user1 before running a playbook. Is there any way to automate that?

Answer 1

Keep in mind that you are allowed multiple "plays" in a single playbook file. So this could be the contents of a single playbook file:

- name: First play, to create the user
  hosts: linode
  sudo: true
  remote_user: root

  tasks:
    -  name: create my user
       user: name=user1 password=etc... 

- Second play, to do the rest of the work
  hosts: linode
  sudo: false
  remote_user: user1
  roles:
     - role: common
     - role: apache2

Note that I have used a task to create the user, but that could be a role so you can re-use it between different projects.

Answer 2

You can create a very simple bootstrap playbook that you run as root and it'll create your user1 which will then run all the other playbooks.