Recipe 9.5. Setting File Ownership with chown
9.5.1 Problem
You
need to change ownership on a file or directory. Perhaps
you've copied something to someone
else's directory but she still
can't edit it, because it's owned
by you. Many Linux problems result from incorrect ownership or
permission. You're seeing messages like
"Permission denied" or
"File is read-only" when it
shouldn't be.
9.5.2 Solution
Use chown (change owner) to change the file
owner, the file and group owner, or the group owner:
# chown user filename
# chown user:group filename
# chown :group filename
For example:
$ chown -v carlas:share index.txt
changed ownership of `index.txt' to carlas:share
$ chown -v :share toc.txt
changed ownership of `toc.txt' to :share
9.5.3 Discussion
Ordinary users can only make changes to files that they own, and they
cannot transfer file ownership to another user. However, ordinary
users can change group file ownership, provided that they belong to
both the original group and the final group.
9.5.4 See Also
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