Do I need to create service accounts prior to a non-root Ambari install?

[#1]

When doing an Ambari install as non-root do you have to manually create all the service accounts prior to install? I know you have to manually install the ambari-agent and provide sudo privs, but would there be any problems with manually pre-creating each service account?

[#2 · Accepted solution]

@Scott Shaw

One of the commands that you grant to the ambari user via sudo is the adduser command. This allows the ambari user to create the service accounts on each node of the cluster. All you need to do is install and start the ambari agent on each node (which you can do as the ambari user once the sudo rules are in place).

[#3]

@emaxwell I suppose then if they are using AD accounts for the customizable accounts they can point to those during install and update the corresponding sudo commands to point to the customized accounts?

[#4]

If the username in AD is the same (e.g. ambari@EXAMPLE.COM), then SSSD integration will use the AD account instead of the local account. Ideally, you'd already have SSSD set up before doing the Ambari installation.

If you're using customized service account names (e.g. my_hive, somecustomuser), then you'd need to modify the sudo entries for the "Customizable Users" to account for this.