shell module find -exec chown - how to parse/escape {} \; ?

[Joanna Delaporte]

I want to find and chown about 4000 users' files while migrating to a new authentication protocol and domain.

I have a task that looks like this: 

  - name: find and fix UID ownerships in all staff homedirs
    shell: "find {{'~'+item.name | expanduser }} -uid {{item.uid}} -exec chown {{item.name}} {} \;"
    with_items:
    - "{{staff|default([])}}"
    - "{{students|default([])}}"
    - "{{staffstuaccounts|default([])}}"
    when: item.uid is defined

And I get this syntax error:

  - name: find and fix UID ownerships in all staff homedirs
    shell: "find {{'~'+item.name | expanduser }} -uid {{item.uid}} -exec chown {{item.name}} {} \;"
                                                                                                 ^ here
We could be wrong, but this one looks like it might be an issue with
missing quotes.  Always quote template expression brackets when they
start a value.

I would use built-in modules, but find doesn't find owners. Stat (as far as I can tell) doesn't go recursive. I'm a little nervous about registering output from find and then writing a new file task to chown the results (which would have to use with_together, I think), in case the user list order gets out of sync between two tasks. Is there a way to escape this shell expression so it will work?

Thanks!

Joanna

[Joanna Delaporte]

I figured it out. I also switched to batch mode instead of single mode:

shell: "find /home/staff -gid {{item.0.stdout}} -exec chgrp {{item.1.stdout}} \\{\\} +"