Linux

chown command Linux to Change owner with examples

chown Command linux is an administrator command is used to change the owner user and/or group of each given file or directory.

chown Command syntax

    
     chown [options] newowner directoryname/filename

chown options

-c, –changes : like verbose but report only when a change is made.
–reference=RFILE :use RFILE’s owner and group rather than specifying OWNER:GROUP values
-f, –silent, –quiet:suppress most error messages.
–dereference : affect the referenced file of each symbolic link rather than the symbolic link itself. This is the default.
-v, –verbose :output a diagnostic for every file processed.
–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.
-h, –no-dereference:affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file. This is useful only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink.
–preserve-root:Do not operate recursively on ‘/’.
–no-preserve-root:do not treat ‘/’ (the root directory) in any special way. This is the default.
-R, –recursive:operate on files and directories recursively.
-L :traverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered.
-H :if a command line argument is a symbolic link to a directory, traverse it.
-P :do not traverse any symbolic links. This is the default.
–help :display this help and exit.
–version :output version information and exit.

chown Command Examples

Changing owner for directories recursively

The ownership of the directories and files contained in them can be changed recursively with -R option.

    
     chown -R exaccount /home/example/

chown Verbose output

The –verbose option shows all the ownership changing. It outputs the diagnostics for each file processed

    
     chown -R –verbose david /home/david/
#changed ownership of ‘/home/david/emails’ to david
#changed ownership of ‘/home/david/blogs’ to david
#changed ownership of ‘/home/david/plugins’ to david

Preserve root

To prevent changing the ownership of / directory recursively, –preserve-root is used.

    
     chown -R –preserve-root david /
#chown: changing ownership of ‘/proc/1/tasks/1/fd’: Permission denied
#chown: changing ownership of ‘/proc/1/tasks/1/fd/status’: Permission denied

chown Silent operation

Let’s consider the following scenario .As normal users cannot change the ownership of files owned by others. Then an error is displayed when a that user tries to change the ownership.

    
     chown david /etc/

chown: changing ownership of `/etc/’: Operation not permitted But if by passing -f or –silent or –quiet option, the error is not displayed.

    
     chown -f david /etc/

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