If you are not familiar with modules, check out Ansible - Getting Started with Modules.
The file module can be used to change the owner, group, and mode of files and directories.
AVOID TROUBLE
If the file or directory does not exist, attempting to change the owner, group or permission of the file should return "file is absent, cannot continue". For this reason, you will almost always want to use find or stat to determine if the file or directory exists.
AVOID TROUBLE
If using the owner parameter and the user account does not exist, "chown failed: failed to look up user username" will be returned. For this reason, you may want to use the shell module to first determine if the user account exists. The shell module could use the cat command to read the /etc/passwd file or use the id command to determine if the username exists.
Here is how you would update the owner, group and mode of /tmp/foo.txt.
---
- hosts: all
tasks:
- name: determine if /tmp/foo.txt exists
ansible.builtin.stat:
path: /tmp/foo.txt
register: out
- name: update foo.txt owner group mode
ansible.builtin.file:
path: /tmp/foo.txt
owner: john.doe
group: admins
mode: '0770'
when: out.stat.exists == true
...
Or, to loop over multiple files.
---
- hosts: localhost
tasks:
- name: find files containing 'foo' in the /tmp directory
ansible.builtin.find:
paths: /tmp
use_regex: true
patterns: (?i).*foo.*
register: foo
- name: update the owner/group/mode of the 'foo' files in the /tmp directory
ansible.builtin.file:
path: "{{ item.path }}"
owner: john.doe
group: admins
mode: '0770'
with_items: "{{ foo.files }}"
when: foo.files >= 1
...
If the playbook is being invoked by the user that owns /tmp/foo.txt (root in this example), then the owner, group and mode will be updated.
TASK [update foo.txt owner group mode]
changed: [server1.example.com]
On the other hand, if the playbook is being invoked by anyone other than root, a fatal error "Operation not permitted" would be returned. Or, become could be used to become root.
TASK [update /tmp/foo.txt owner group mode]
fatal: [server1.example.com]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "gid": 10, "group": "root", "mode": "0644", "msg": "chown failed: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted: '/tmp/foo.txt'", "owner": "root", "path": "/tmp/foo.txt", "secontext": "unconfined_u:object_r:user_tmp_t:s0", "size": 0, "state": "file", "uid": 0}
Recursive directory
state: directory and recurse: yes can be used to update the owner of every file and directory at and below a certain directory. In this example, every file and directory below the /tmp directory will be updated to be owned by root.
AVOID TROUBLE
When recurse is used, the owner will be changed at and below the target directory. In this example, the /tmp directory and every file and directory below /tmp will be updated to be owned by root.
---
- hosts: all
tasks:
- name: recursively update /tmp directory owner
ansible.builtin.file:
path: /tmp
state: directory
recurse: yes
owner: root
...
Or like this, to give "group" the "write" permission.
---
- hosts: all
tasks:
- name: recursively update /tmp directory
ansible.builtin.file:
path: /tmp
state: directory
recurse: yes
mode: g+w
...
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