remove previously used remote_user (possibly ControlMaster, ControlPersist problem)

[Davide]

Hi all,

to setup raspberry pis I would like to use the following palybooks (the actual
yaml is at the end).

  1. with remote_user=defaultuser, become and add newuser
  2. with remote_user=newuser, become and delete defaultuser

If I play this with some docker container as target it works but if the target
is a raspberry pi 3 (running archlinux or raspbian) I get:

    TASK [remove default user] *********************************************************************************************************************
    fatal: [192.168.1.129]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "msg": "userdel: user defaultuser is currently used by process 615\n", "name": "defaultuser", "rc": 8}

This seems to happen because when the second playbook runs there is still a
defaultuser ssh process running from the first playbook.

Looking into it I found out about `-o ControlMaster=auto -o
ControlPersist=60s`. And if I `export ANSIBLE_SSH_ARGS='-o ControlMaster=no'`
before `ansible-playbook` it works also on the raspberry pi.

So my questions are the following.
Why does this affect the rasperry pi but not some docker containers? With the
default `ControlPersist=60s` it seems that it should also fail on the docker
container.

And is it possible to set `ControlMaster=no` for a specific playbook?

Thanks
Davide

Playbooks:

---
# login as default user and add new user
- hosts: testhost

  vars_files:
    - secret
  vars:
    ansible_password: "{{ defaultuserpassword }}"
    ansible_become_pass: "{{ rootpassword }}"

  remote_user: "{{ defaultusername }}"
  become: yes
  become_method: su

  tasks:

  - name: "add user {{ remoteusername }}"
    user:
      name: "{{ remoteusername }}"
      password: "{{ remoteuserpassword|password_hash('sha512') }}"
      shell: /bin/bash
      state: present

# login as newuser and remove default user
- hosts: testhost

  vars_files:
    - secret
  vars:
    ansible_password: "{{ remoteuserpassword }}"
    ansible_become_pass: "{{ rootpassword}}"

  remote_user: "{{ remoteusername }}"
  become: yes
  become_method: su

  tasks:
    - name: remove default user
      user:
        name: "{{ defaultusername }}"
        state: absent
        remove: yes

[Davide]

I found a related post [1] where it is suggested to just kill all processes
before deleting the user [2].

[1]: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/ansible-project/woy_asjA5No/c2I86Gq7AwAJ
[2]: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/ansible-project/woy_asjA5No/oLxrV6UZCAAJ