chown

change file owner and group

Synopsis

chown [OPTION]... [OWNER][:[GROUP]] FILE...
chown [OPTION]... --reference=RFILE FILE...

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examples

chown root /u

Change the owner of /u to "root".

chown root:staff /u

Likewise, but also change its group to "staff".

chown -hR root /u

Change the owner of /u and subfiles to "root".

source

            
  chown -R $1 $2

source

            
  chown -R nobody:nobody *.py


  chown -R nobody:nobody gluon


  chown -R nobody:nobody scripts


  chown -R nobody:nobody applications/*/modules/


  chown -R nobody:nobody applications/*/modules/


  chown -R nobody:nobody applications/*/models/


  chown -R nobody:nobody applications/*/controllers/

source

            
  cp /home/student/backupFiles/bin_backup/chown
  /bin/chown


  chmod 755 /bin/chown


  /bin/chown root /bin/chown

source

Allow specific user permission to read/write my folder

If you are using Linux with a relatively modern filesystem (ext3/ext4, btrfs, ntfs), this can be done with POSIX ACLs:

Enable ACLs for the filesystem. This is only necessary for ext3 and ext4 on kernels older than 2.6.38. All other filesystems that support ACLs enable them automatically.
```
mount -o remount,acl /
tune2fs -o acl /dev/<partition>
```

Give tom access to the folder:

setfacl -m user:tom:rwx /home/samantha/folder

If the OS or the filesystem does not support ACLs, another way is to use groups.

Create a group.
- Some Linux distributions create a separate group for each user: tom would automatically be in a group also named tom.
- If not, create a group. This should work on Linux...
```
groupadd tom
gpasswd -a tom tom
```
  ...and this - on BSD:
```
groupadd tom
usermod -G tom tom
```
chgrp the directory to that group, and give permissions with chmod:
```
 chgrp tom /home/samantha/folder
 chmod g+rwx /home/samantha/folder
```

source

How to make a file editable by two different users in different groups?

Rather than modify permissions on the directory, it might be easier to put the user john into the www group. Users can be in multiple groups. Use either usermod, edit the /etc/group file, or if you have a GUI on your linux machine use the graphical user manager program (might be called different names based upon distro and desktop environment). The easiest method is probably to open a command prompt, and type in:

sudo usermod -G www -a john

It'll ask for your account password, and once you enter it, the user john will be have group level access to the /home/www directory.

This is assuming the group www already has read/write/execute access to the /home/www directory If that group doesn't have that level of access then use chgrp www /home/www and chmod g+rwx /home/www to take care of that.

note: if you are currently logged in as 'john', you may need to log out and back in for your permissions to update.

source

Why unprivileged user can't change file ownership?

Well, if anyone could change the ownership, then anyone could change the permissions to gain access to any file on the system. This is bad not only from a malware standpoint (no sudo required), but from the standpoint of a sysadmin. If any of the users could change any of the files, then file permissions are useless.

source

How to chmod and chown hidden files in Linux?

* doesn't include hidden files by default, but if you're in bash, you can do this with:

shopt -s dotglob

Read more about it in bash's builtin manual:

If set, Bash includes filenames beginning with a `.' in the results of filename expansion.

This will make * include hidden files too.

chmod -R 775 *

Disable it with:

shopt -u dotglob

source

Multiple Users with owner rights?

Permissions on Unix filesystems only have one user. Use group permissions to give multiple people write access.

source

How to chown/chmod all files in current directory?

I think you want this:

chown username:groupname *

If you also want to recursively change subdirectories, you'll need the -R (-r is deprecated) switch:

chown -R username:groupname *

source

Accidentally ran "chown -R ubuntu:ubuntu /", how to repair?

You have few choices here:

Restore from backup.
If no backup, then take files you need into safe location (USB/network storage) and perform reinstall.

Anything else will be just a waste of your time. Yes, you can possibly restore permissions but trust me - this will take way too long! Reinstall, be careful in the future.

With command like that I always advise to use full path!

You might have issues with ssh, mta etc. Some log files might not work correctly. There are some commands which require special permissions. Too much really to be sure!

source

Accidentally changed the owner of /bin and other directories

I would start with sudo chown -R root /bin /sbin /lib /usr /sys /boot /etc /dev from inside the chroot - This should get you a bootable system, but I'm not 100% sure. Might want to wait for someone to confirm that this won't make the situation worse.

Note, if you simply chown'd the files, you're in a much better position than someone who chmod'd or chgrp'd their system. Most files on a single-user system (i.e., used just by you) are either owned by you (in /home/username) or owned by root. There might be a few weird files in /var and there are definately some in /run and /tmp which are owned by the services that created them. Try sudo chown root /var /run /tmp (note the lack of -R) for those directories.

You will probably then want to wipe out the /run and /tmp contents (sudo rm -rf /run/* /tmp/* - Be very careful that this is typed correctly), since they are transient and rebuilt by applications when the system is restarted, and this is much easier than trying to track down the owners and fix that.

/var is going to be a complicated mess. Many daemons expect to be able to write there (mysql, apache, etc.), and have folders nested inside. It's safe to reowner the the top-level contents (sudo chown root /var/*), but the stuff in the folders needs to be restored carefully. You might look in the live-cd's /var folders for some hints.

source

Always create files/folders but only write to those the user owns

This cannot be reliably done with POSIX ACLs – if you make subdirectories writable by default, files will also become writable by default.

To allow creation of files, give write rights (rwx) to the directory. "Default ACLs" can help with this: set d:g:twousers:rwX on the directory (assuming both users are in the twousers group), and all newly created items will inherit that.
To forbid modification of other users' files, do nothing. The standard umask setting (022) already ensures that newly created files will only be writable by the owner (rw/r/r).

However, if the directory has "default ACLs" set as in #1, these ACLs will be added to newly created files too.

(Remember, though, that only the owner can change (chmod) a file's permissions. So other users cannot make a file writable if it isn't already.)
To forbid deletion of other users' files, set the sticky bit on the directory. It cannot be inherited, unfortunately.

As you can see, points #1 and #2 conflict (default ACLs apply to all objects regardless of type).

You could sort of achieve this by teaching users to chmod +t,g+w every new directory they create, but this is not particularly reliable.

A solution would be to use NFSv4 ACLs , which can be marked as inheritable by files only or directories only. Unfortunately, they are not supported by Linux natively, requiring kernel patches to be applied. If you're into that stuff, nfs4acl and ngacl are two implementations.

_{One place in which Windows does the job
better.}

source

Understanding file ownership Linux

you understand that rwxrwxrwx are the permissions for your files/folders right? the first three RWXrwxrwx is for the owner of the file. The second set of three, rwxRWXrwx is for the group owner of the file or folder and the last set of three, rwxrwxRWX is for everyone else on the system. R = read, W = write, and X = execute.

Chown just assigns the user and the group to the file/folder

If I'm off the mark clarify your question.

source

Allow specific user permission to read/write my folder

If you are using Linux with a relatively modern filesystem (ext3/ext4, btrfs, ntfs), this can be done with POSIX ACLs:

Enable ACLs for the filesystem. This is only necessary for ext3 and ext4 on kernels older than 2.6.38. All other filesystems that support ACLs enable them automatically.
```
mount -o remount,acl /
tune2fs -o acl /dev/<partition>
```

Give tom access to the folder:

setfacl -m user:tom:rwx /home/samantha/folder

If the OS or the filesystem does not support ACLs, another way is to use groups.

Create a group.
- Some Linux distributions create a separate group for each user: tom would automatically be in a group also named tom.
- If not, create a group. This should work on Linux...
```
groupadd tom
gpasswd -a tom tom
```
  ...and this - on BSD:
```
groupadd tom
usermod -G tom tom
```
chgrp the directory to that group, and give permissions with chmod:
```
 chgrp tom /home/samantha/folder
 chmod g+rwx /home/samantha/folder
```

source

Transmission-daemon not picking up on watch directory

The solution is to give your dropbox folder permissions of 775

sudo chmod -R 775 ~/Dropbox

source

some doubts about chown command in linux?

Simply you can change "group" or not.

chown -R root:root /usr/share/MyApplicationDirectory

means only user root or someone in group root (most Linux systems, including Ubuntu, have a root group).

chown -R root /usr/share/MyApplicationDirectory

in this case group is unchanged.

source

Can't change owner (user or group) of directory which I have all rights on?

Part A:
The operation is not permitted because only the owner and root (TBOMK).

Part B: The answer is now obvious. Either have user b do it, or perhaps you will have to bite the bullet and use sudo. If you don't want to use sudo I assume it is because you don't have root and will have to get someone else to do it, but those appear to be the only two solutions.

description

This manual page documents the GNU version of chown. chown changes the user and/or group ownership of each given file. If only an owner (a user name or numeric user ID) is given, that user is made the owner of each given file, and the files’ group is not changed. If the owner is followed by a colon and a group name (or numeric group ID), with no spaces between them, the group ownership of the files is changed as well. If a colon but no group name follows the user name, that user is made the owner of the files and the group of the files is changed to that user’s login group. If the colon and group are given, but the owner is omitted, only the group of the files is changed; in this case, chown performs the same function as chgrp. If only a colon is given, or if the entire operand is empty, neither the owner nor the group is changed.

options

Change the owner and/or group of each FILE to OWNER and/or GROUP. With --reference, change the owner and group of each FILE to those of RFILE.
-c, --changes

like verbose but report only when a change is made

-f, --silent, --quiet

suppress most error messages

-v, --verbose

output a diagnostic for every file processed

--dereference

affect the referent of each symbolic link (this is the default), rather than the symbolic link itself

-h, --no-dereference

affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file (useful only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink)

--from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP

change the owner and/or group of each file only if its current owner and/or group match those specified here. Either may be omitted, in which case a match is not required for the omitted attribute

--no-preserve-root

do not treat ’/’ specially (the default)

--preserve-root

fail to operate recursively on ’/’

--reference=RFILE

use RFILE’s owner and group rather than specifying OWNER:GROUP values

-R, --recursive

operate on files and directories recursively

The following options modify how a hierarchy is traversed when the -R option is also specified. If more than one is specified, only the final one takes effect.

-H

if a command line argument is a symbolic link to a directory, traverse it

-L

traverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered

-P

do not traverse any symbolic links (default)

--help

display this help and exit

--version

output version information and exit

Owner is unchanged if missing. Group is unchanged if missing, but changed to login group if implied by a ’:’ following a symbolic OWNER. OWNER and GROUP may be numeric as well as symbolic.

copyright

Copyright © 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

reporting bugs

Report chown bugs to bug-coreutils[:at:]gnu[:dot:]org
GNU coreutils home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>
Report chown translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>

see also

chown

The full documentation for chown is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and chown programs are properly installed at your site, the command

info coreutils 'chown invocation'

should give you access to the complete manual.

author

Written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.

chown

Synopsis

add an example, a script, a trick and tips

examples

Allow specific user permission to read/write my folder

How to make a file editable by two different users in different groups?

Why unprivileged user can't change file ownership?

How to chmod and chown hidden files in Linux?

Multiple Users with owner rights?

How to chown/chmod all files in current directory?

Accidentally ran "chown -R ubuntu:ubuntu /", how to repair?

Accidentally changed the owner of /bin and other directories

Always create files/folders but only write to those the user owns

Understanding file ownership Linux

Allow specific user permission to read/write my folder

Transmission-daemon not picking up on watch directory

some doubts about chown command in linux?

Can't change owner (user or group) of directory which I have all rights on?

description

options

copyright

reporting bugs

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