Getting started

Subordinate UID/GID range for root

Linux user namespaces can be used to create unprivileged LXC or Docker containers which don't use normal UID/GID ranges of the host system. These "subordinate" UID/GID ranges are configured in the /etc/subuid and /etc/subgid databases respectively.

Unfortunately, Debian by default does not reserve a subordinate UID/GID range for the root account. In conjunction with the system automatically creating subUID/subGID ranges for new user accounts created on a host this might cause creation of the root subUID/subGID ranges difficult. To avoid this issue, the debops.root_account Ansible role will reserve a defined set of UID/GID ranges for the root account which can then be used to, for example, create unprivileged LXC containers.

Example inventory

The debops.root_account role is included by default in the common.yml DebOps playbook; you don't need to do anything to have it executed.

If you don’t want to let debops.root_account manage the root account, you can do this with the following setting in your inventory:

root_account__enabled: False

Example playbook

If you are using this role without DebOps, here's an example Ansible playbook that uses the debops.root_account role:

---

- name: Manage root system account
  collections: [ 'debops.debops', 'debops.roles01',
                 'debops.roles02', 'debops.roles03' ]
  hosts: [ 'debops_all_hosts', 'debops_service_root_account' ]
  become: True

  environment: '{{ inventory__environment | d({})
                   | combine(inventory__group_environment | d({}))
                   | combine(inventory__host_environment  | d({})) }}'

  roles:

    - role: root_account
      tags: [ 'role::root_account', 'skip::root_account' ]