Ansible - Mode 755 for directories and 644 for files recursively

I'd like to allow anyone to list and read all files in my directory tree, but I don't want to make the files executable :

dir
  \subdir1
      file1
  \subdir2
      file2
  ...
  \subdirX
      fileX

The following task makes my directories and files readable, but it makes all the files executable as well:

- name: Make my directory tree readable
  file:
    path: dir
    mode: 0755
    recurse: yes

On the other hand, if I choose mode 0644, then all my files are not executable, but I'm not able to list my directories.

Is it possible to set mode 755 for all directories and 644 for all files in a directory tree?

Since version 1.8, Ansible supports symbolic modes. Thus, the following would perform the task you want:

- name: Make my directory tree readable
  file:
    path: dir
    mode: u=rwX,g=rX,o=rX
    recurse: yes

Because X (instead of x) only applies to directories or files with at least one x bit set.

The Ansible file/copy modules don't give you the granularity of specifying permissions based on file type so you'd most likely need to do this manually by doing something along these lines:

- name: Ensure directories are 0755
  command: find {{ path }} -type d -exec chmod -c 0755 {} \;
  register: chmod_result
  changed_when: "chmod_result.stdout != \"\""

- name: Ensure files are 0644
  command: find {{ path }} -type f -exec chmod -c 0644 {} \;
  register: chmod_result
  changed_when: "chmod_result.stdout != \"\""

These would have the effect of recursing through {{ path }} and changing the permissions of every file or directory to the specified permissions.

Due to a "inadequate" implementation Ansible supports symbolic modes only partially (see explanation below).

Other than using the command line chmod, setting mode to u=rwX,g=rX,o=rX with Ansible will not allways be sufficient to get your files set to 644. The resulting permissions will also depend on the original mode of the file!

As stated in the docs for chmod and already pointed out by some comments to other answers of this question: If file permission for either u, g, or o is executable, then X will set the file permission also to x.

For example. If one file has mode 740 -rwxr-----, setting mode u=rwX,g=rX,o=rX with ansible, you will get 755 -rwxr-xr-x instead the expected 644 -rw-r--r--. Despite that this is not what you wanted, it will make the file executable by group and others with unwanted security problems.

In those cases, with Ansible you will need two steps to set file the permissions to 644.

- file:
    path: /path/to/dir
    state: directory
    recurse: yes
    mode: '{{ item }}'
  loop:
    - '-x'
    - 'u=rwX,g=rX,o=rX'

• Note that if you wanted mode 744 for files you'll need u=rwx,g=rX,o=rX (first x lowercase!). This will work in Ansible as for the current implementation BUT this is not the way command line chmod works. See *Symbolic nodes with chmod below.

Why is this so:

Ansible states in the function _symbolic_mode_to_octal to include things like: u=rw-x+X,g=r-x+X,o=r-x+X. Nonetheless if the given mode is g=-x+X, ansible ignores the -x perm. The function _symbolic_mode_to_octal iterates over the given permissions, when it comes to X the function _get_octal_mode_from_symbolic_perms doesn't compare the requested permissions to the already applied but to the original ones, thus ignoring it:

This is probably a bug in Ansible.

The simplest and efficient way is to delegate to a shell command: As proposed in @BruceP's answer.

If for some reason you are averse to use 'workarounds' and need an ansible-ish way to solve the problem AND you don't care about performance you could try the following:

NOTE: This will take very, very long depending on the number of files and directories!

- name: example
  hosts: 192.168.111.123
  become: yes
  gather_facts: no
  vars:
    path_to_dir: /path/to/dir
    target_mode_for_directories: 755
    target_mode_for_files: 644
  tasks:
    - name: collect list of directories '{{ path_to_dir }}'
      find:
        paths: '{{ path_to_dir }}'
        recurse: yes
        file_type: directory
      register: found_directories
    - name: set collected directories to mode '{{ target_mode_for_directories }}'
      file:
        dest: '{{ item.path }}'
        mode: '{{ target_mode_for_directories }}'
      loop: '{{ found_directories.files }}'
    - name: collect list of files under '{{ path_to_dir }}'
      find:
        paths: '{{ path_to_dir }}'
        recurse: yes
        file_type: file
      register: found_files
    - name: set collected files to mode '{{ target_mode_for_files }}'
      file:
        dest: '{{ item.path }}'
        mode: '{{ target_mode_for_files }}'
      loop: '{{ found_files.files }}'

Symbolic modes with chmod

Remember that setting symbolic modes with chmod can be very tricky. See the following examples that simply differ on the order of lowercase and uppercase X, i.e. u=X,g=X,o=x (o=lowercase x) vs. u=x,g=X,o=X (u=lowercase x) which results in 001 ---------x vs. 111 ---x--x--x:

$ sudo chmod -R 000 path/to/file; \
  sudo chmod -R u=X,g=X,o=x path/to/file; \
  sudo find path/to/file -printf ""%03m" "%M" "%p\\n"";

001 ---------x path/to/file

$ sudo chmod -R 000 path/to/file; \
  sudo chmod -R u=x,g=X,o=X path/to/file; \
  sudo find path/to/file -printf ""%03m" "%M" "%p\\n"";

111 ---x--x--x path/to/file

This is due to the fact that the perms are processed first for u, then for g and last for o. In the first example X won't apply for files because there is no x perm. In the second case X will apply for files after u=x has been set, thus setting both g=x and o=x

This worked for me:

- file:
    path: dir
    mode: a-x
    recurse: yes
- file:
    path: dir
    mode: u=rwX,g=rX,o=rX
    recurse: yes

Remove execution permission first from all, otherwise group and others get execution permission to files.

See chmod man pages about X-directive:

> execute/search only if the file is a directory or already has execute > permission for some user (X)

Also this works:

- shell: "chmod -R a-x,u=rwX,g=rX,o=rX dir"

For some reason combination of these two does not work:

- file:
    path: dir
    mode: a-x,u=rwX,g=rX,o=rX
    recurse: yes