# List of files managed by ansible

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/list-of-files-managed-by-ansible/30656>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [June 26, 2019, 9:37am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/list-of-files-managed-by-ansible/30656 "2019-06-26T09:37:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Claudius\_Heine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@Claudius\_Heine](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Claudius_Heine)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2019, 9:37am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/list-of-files-managed-by-ansible/30656/1 "2019-06-26T09:37:25Z")

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Hi,

I am quite new to Ansible and look forward to use it to manage some of  
our servers. We are a small company with only ~10 virtual servers  
hosting each a different service and have multiple admins for those.

For us it does not make sense to port the configuration for every  
service to Ansible, just for the common ones (OpenSSH, Userconfig, etc.).

Since we have multiple admins, some of which don't need to use Ansible,  
because they manage those services directly on the server, it would be  
good to have some way to communicate what files (or even lines) on the  
server are managed by Ansible and which they are free to edit.

Writing headers like "This file is managed by Ansible" is only possible  
for text files, so instead it would be an idea to create a managed file  
path listing on the server.

Is there a way to do this or solve this in a different way?

kind regards,  
Claudius

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/original/1X/1882d9a01da5d8996a862359b0913cc568a39b84.svg) [@system](https://forum.ansible.com/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2019, 1:50pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/list-of-files-managed-by-ansible/30656/2 "2019-07-05T13:50:48Z")

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I used to use xattr to tag files with this kind of information, but  
that also requires user discipline to check each file.