creds 1.0.5

Creds is a library for managing linux user accounts and credentials.

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Creds
=====

Creds is a library that simplifies the management of linux user accounts and their credentials.

Instead of issuing commands to create, update and delete users and their ssh keys, supply Creds with details of the users you want and it will take care of the implementation.

The supported inputs are currently YAML, JSON or python dictionaries.


User vs System accounts
-----------------------
Linux has a default range of user ids to provide to system and user accounts, found in /etc/login.defs.
Creds will attempt to read this file to determine which accounts are in scope for management and, if unavailable, will default to:
> UID_MIN = 1000 # User accounts will have an id of 1000 or more
> UID_MAX = 60000 # User accounts will not have an id higher than 60000


Example Usage
-------------

Read a list of users from users.yml and create them (if missing) or update (if existing):

```
from creds.users import Users
from creds.plan import (create_plan, execute_plan)

existing_users = Users.from_passwd() # Get a list of existing users and their keys
proposed_users = Users.from_yaml('users.yml') # Read the proposed list of users and their keys

# Generate a list of operations to transition from current to existing
plan = create_plan(existing_users=existing_users, proposed_users=proposed_users)
execute_plan(plan=plan) # Execute the plan
```

###### Deleting users

If your input defines all of the user accounts you want to exist, you can choose to purge any that are undefined by adding a parameter to create_plan:
```
plan = create_plan(existing_users=existing_users, proposed_users=proposed_users,
purge_undefined=True)
```

###### Protecting users

If there are users you want to protect from change, e.g. you want to make sure that certain users are not deleted or updated under any circumstances, then you can supply a list of usernames for Creds to ignore:
```
plan = create_plan(existing_users=existing_users, proposed_users=proposed_users,
purge_undefined=True, protected_users=['rod', 'jane', 'freddy'])
```