# Recursively chown'ing a directory **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Project\ **Created:** [September 17, 2012, 6:34pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/recursively-chowning-a-directory/11904 "2012-09-17T18:34:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Matt\_Coddington](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Matt\_Coddington](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Matt_Coddington)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2012, 6:34pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/recursively-chowning-a-directory/11904/1 "2012-09-17T18:34:38Z")
Hi All, Prior to Ansible 0.7, the file module would recursively chown directories, now it doesn't (seems like the right behavior; i was surprised when it did recurse, but that's actually what i wanted in this case :)). Is there another way I should be doing this besides figuring out each directory I want and maybe using with\_items? thanks! matt ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2012, 11:22pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/recursively-chowning-a-directory/11904/2 "2012-09-17T23:22:45Z")
Yeah, we fixed the glitch. I'd accept a patch for a recurse option that ads the '-R' ... I almost thought we already had that but it looks like no. The hard part is computing 'changed' in that instance, to which point I'd probably say returning 'True' all the time is plenty sufficient when recurse is set. ---
**Author:** ![Matt\_Coddington](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Matt\_Coddington](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Matt_Coddington)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 1:25am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/recursively-chowning-a-directory/11904/3 "2012-09-18T01:25:51Z")
> Yeah, we fixed the glitch. > > I'd accept a patch for a recurse option that ads the '-R' ... I almost > thought we already had that but it looks like no. > > The hard part is computing 'changed' in that instance, to which point > I'd probably say returning 'True' all the time is plenty sufficient > when recurse is set. I've got a commit that attempts this at [https://github.com/mcodd/ansible/commit/2ec3db0643d52859f45c6c8a846fc8864c77e956](https://github.com/mcodd/ansible/commit/2ec3db0643d52859f45c6c8a846fc8864c77e956). Apparently Python doesn't have built-in recursion for chmod/chown so you have to use os.walk, but when you do that you actually get computing "changed" for free because you can just use the existing functions in the file module while looping over the files and directories (I'm a pretty novice Python programmer, but this bears itself out based on a few basic tests I've run since that commit in my local environment). Didn't submit a pull request yet because I'm on the fence about whether and/or how to recurse for chmod'ing. Per the commit above, it does just what you tell it to do; e.g. if I say recurse=yes and tell it mode=0644 then all my files and directories will become 0644. Even thought that's what I asked for, I probably didn't mean it (I probably meant I wanted all the files to be 644 but that I still wanted the execute bit set on my directories). os.walk makes it easy to just chmod the files instead of the directories, but that's also probably not what everyone wants (and certainly not what everyone would expect). Should we just not allow recurse for mode, leave it as-is, or... ? thanks, matt ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 1:37am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/recursively-chowning-a-directory/11904/4 "2012-09-18T01:37:36Z")
Hmm, I'd be tempted to just add the -R, as the directory tree could be /quite/ large, and coreutils is optimized for the task. I would guess it would want to do files /and/ directories, and the recurse would also affect chgrp. I'd say we could just leave it out though, as executing via shell isn't terrible. ---
**Author:** ![Matt\_Coddington](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Matt\_Coddington](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Matt_Coddington)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 2:01am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/recursively-chowning-a-directory/11904/5 "2012-09-18T02:01:28Z")
Are you suggesting that we just use os.system and the OS's chmod/chown when recurse is set, to avoid potential scaling problems with using Python when the directory trees are huge? If so, I agree w/you that just executing via shell is a better alternative, and putting os.system calls in the file module just for this purpose would just clutter it without adding much value. That said, it was kind of neat to realize we got the appropriate value for Changed so easily by doing this with os.walk... I think there's some value there, but don't know enough about Python to understand the scaling limitations or maybe other reasons it's not such a great idea. matt ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 2:20am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/recursively-chowning-a-directory/11904/6 "2012-09-18T02:20:57Z")
Yes, basically I'm thinking of what happens when someone decides to try it on a large directory tree. ---
**Author:** ![Aleksej\_Romanov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/278dde/32.png) [@Aleksej\_Romanov](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Aleksej_Romanov)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 4:57pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/recursively-chowning-a-directory/11904/7 "2012-09-19T16:57:17Z")
I tried. $ cp -r /usr/ /tmp/ &\>/dev/null $ find /tmp/usr | wc -l 130615 $ time chgrp -R user /tmp/usr/ real 0m0.372s user 0m0.048s sys 0m0.320s $ time ansible -c local -i /tmp/i 127.0.0.1 -m file -a 'path=/tmp/usr \ group=user state=directory recurse=yes' &\>/dev/null real 0m7.696s user 0m5.488s sys 0m2.192s So it is much slower, but still only 7 seconds with quite large directory. Assuming that one usually would use this for own project's files, not /, it should be quick enough. According permissions for files and dirs, may be it is reasonable to have separate parameters for each one, not 'mode' for both, so it will be 'permissions\_mode\_for\_files=644 permissions\_mode\_for\_directories=755' ---
**Author:** ![senorsmile](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/senorsmile/32/9024_2.png) [@senorsmile](https://forum.ansible.com/u/senorsmile)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2013, 8:27pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/recursively-chowning-a-directory/11904/8 "2013-10-07T20:27:46Z")
I could definitely use this:permissions\_mode\_for\_files=644 permissions\_mode\_for\_directories=755 or something like it. Right now I have to run manual shell with find like this: find /some/dir/ -type d -exec /bin/chmod 755 {} ; find /some/dir/ -type f -exec /bin/chmod 644 {} ; ---
**Author:** ![Ben\_Hoyt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Ben\_Hoyt](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Ben_Hoyt)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2014, 6:38pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/recursively-chowning-a-directory/11904/9 "2014-06-24T18:38:42Z")
Yeah, I’m seeing this same thing – trying to change the owner of a large (existing) directory recursively is taking 10-20 times as long using the “file” module vs just using chown -R, so I’ve opted to use the latter in our playbooks. ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan1)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2014, 7:17pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/recursively-chowning-a-directory/11904/10 "2014-06-24T19:17:23Z")
FYI: you are replying to a mailing list post from last October. ---
**Author:** ![Ben\_Hoyt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Ben\_Hoyt](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Ben_Hoyt)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2014, 7:22pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/recursively-chowning-a-directory/11904/11 "2014-06-24T19:22:22Z")
Understood – the intention was to bump this up as it’s still an issue with Ansible 1.5.5. -Ben ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan1)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2014, 7:37pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/recursively-chowning-a-directory/11904/12 "2014-06-24T19:37:13Z")
See if there’s a ticket filed and file one would be better, we really don’t bump old threads on this list. I also don’t consider this an issue so much more as a feature request / enhancement idea, where a pull request that makes it happen would probably be ideal. You can also keep using the chown.