How to use the chown command in Linux

Created Jul 3, 2021 at 17:49

The command chown, an abbreviation of change owner, is used on Unix and Unix-like operating systems to change the owner of file system files, directories.

change the ownership of a file named filename to a new owner named install

chown install filename

chown --help

chown --version

ls -l

-rw-r--r-- 12 root root
|[-][-][-]-  [--] [--]
| |  |  | |   |    |
| |  |  | |   |    +--> 7. Group
| |  |  | |   +-------> 6. Owner
| |  |  | +-----------> 5. Alternate Access Method
| |  |  +-------------> 4. Others Permissions
| |  +----------------> 3. Group Permissions
| +-------------------> 2. Owner Permissions
+---------------------> 1. File Type

Change Ownership of Multiple Linux Files

root will be the new owner of files

chown root file1 file2

With UID

chown 1002 filename

changes the group of the file

chown :group filename.md

chown: invalid group: ‘:group’

Check Owner and Group Before Making Changes.

verified the ownership and the group

chown --from=root:group user:group2 filename.md

subdirectories

chown -R user:group dirname

user group

The syntax for the chown command is as follows:

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

OPTIONS:
--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
-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