Get username in system provisioning independent from hostname?

[fwilhe]

Hi,

related to #1015 I am wondering how I can get the hostname so it does not depend on the name of my local user on my host os.

My use-case is that I want to share a lima yaml file where I'm installing docker in a system provisioning script (so it's all as root), but I want to add my non-root user to the docker group so I can use docker without sudo.

I'd be fine with using an environment variable but I could not find any.

I'd also be fine with a LIMA_DEFAULT_USERNAME variable/setting.

So in my setup I have a line like usermod -a -G docker MYUSERNAME where the username currently depends on the host os which makes it hard to share/reuse the yaml file. Is there a way to make this generic?

Another reason why people might want to use a username that is not equal to the username of the host os is if the host os username is something that should not be shared. So if I copy/paste my default prompt from my vm it always has the username in it which I don't want to share for privacy reasons. I'd be happy with a generic 'lima' username.

[afbjorklund]

The groups were discussed, not sure about user:

• How can I add user to a group? #691
• Add configuration option to add user to one or more groups. #1686

BTW; I think the generated ssh key also leaks user@host (since it is the default "comment", in the user.pub)

[fwilhe]

Good point about the ssh key

For me currently it's two separate but related questions (sorry for putting them in one issue)

• How can I generically address my non-root user in the system provisioning script so it will not only work on my laptop?
• How can I avoid leaking my host's username (which I can't freely choose on my work laptop) by sharing screenshots/logs/yaml files

[afbjorklund]

I think the user is covered by #1015, but we probably need a new issue for the lima-provided ssh key. There's one about users:

• Change the default value of ssh.loadDotSSHPubKeys from true to false #1617

It should be something simple like providing a default value (such as -C "lima") for the comment, instead of the user@host?

ssh-keygen will by default write keys in an OpenSSH-specific format. This format is preferred as it offers better protection for keys at rest as well as allowing storage of key comments within the private key file itself.
The key comment may be useful to help identify the key. The comment is initialized to “user@host” when the key is created, but can be changed using the -c option.