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I want to say, "Add `recurse =&gt; true`" to your file resource

Be aware of the caveats. <https://www.puppet.com/docs/puppet/7/types/file.html#file-attribute-recurse>

Interesting - I was reading this: <https://www.puppetcookbook.com/posts/creating-a-directory-tree.html>

Perhaps they’ve added recurse since then

I just tried this (with a hard coded path):
```    file { '/some/long/path/with/parents/that/do/not/exist/on/disk/yet':
      ensure =&gt; 'directory',
      owner   =&gt; 'tomcat',
      group   =&gt; 'tomcat',
      recurse =&gt; true,
    }```

And the Puppet agent comes back with:
```Info: Applying configuration version 'rhs-dev-cf877fee152'
Error: Cannot create /some/long/path/with/parents/that/do/not/exist/on/disk/yet; parent directory /some/long/path/with/parents/that/do/not/exist/on/disk does not exist
Error: /Stage[main]/Dspace_modern/File[/some/long/path/with/parents/that/do/not/exist/on/disk/yet]/ensure: change from 'absent' to 'directory' failed: Cannot create /some/long/path/with/parents/that/do/not/exist/on/disk/yet; parent directory /some/long/path/with/parents/that/do/not/exist/on/disk does not exist```

We have a defined type `parent_dirs` that uses `reduce`, looking up parameters from Hiera so we can make sure that any common path elements get the same ownership/permissions regardless of where `parent_dirs` is called from.
```define parent_dirs (
  Hash $params = {
    'ensure' =&gt; 'directory',
    'owner'  =&gt; 'root',
    'group'  =&gt; 'root',
    'mode'   =&gt; '0755',
  },
) {
  $parent_dirs_params = lookup('parent_dirs::params',Hash[String,Hash],undef,{})
  $title.split('/').reduce([]) | $sub_path,$d | {
    $new_path = $sub_path + $d
    $new_path_join = $new_path.join('/')
    if $new_path_join =~ /^\// {
      # Use the params hash as defaults if any values aren't set in parent_dirs::params for a particular path
      ensure_resource('file',$new_path_join,($params + pick($parent_dirs_params[$new_path_join],{})))
    }
    $new_path
  }
}```

Thanks <@U01B7920SC9> - I take it that’s not in Puppet core or a module etc.  That’s something you’ve defined for your site ?

As an aside, I’m not sure that “recurse =&gt; true” actually creates missing parents.  It doesn’t seem to in my quick test

Basically, loop through the directory tree elements, split by `/` and `ensure =&gt; directory` on each element.

Thanks all for your help - does make it difficult though.  Wonder why they haven’t implemented the equivalent of “mkdir -p”

It does cut a bit against the roles&amp;profiles grain but OTOH is handy for a sysadmin

Right - yeah, very much approaching things from a sysadmin point of view - so there is likely things I’m not aware of :slightly_smiling_face:

there is this too <https://github.com/voxpupuli/puppet-extlib/blob/master/REFERENCE.md#extlibmkdir_p>

Thanks <@UEQ6B9JAH> - Looks useful, will look into this

I use <https://forge.puppet.com/modules/pltraining/dirtree> to create my parent directories.