Linux’s Chown Command: What to Do With It

System administrators are most responsible for maintaining ownership rights and file permissions. Any multi-user operating systems like Linux, you will need to manage permissions and ownership Linux, It is essential to properly assign ownership rights to directories and files.

This is where the chown command comes in handy. This should not be confused with chmod, The command chown allows you to change the owner of files, and can assign them to other groups. This command is essential for every Linux user.

Below is some information to help you get started.

What can you do to check the ownership of a particular file?

You should learn the basics of how to verify that a file is owned before you can start moving files between different groups or owners. It is easy: add a -l flag in a regular command to include ownership information for the directory or file being queried.

Imagine that you have a file named example.txt. The command to view its owner information will look something like this:

ls -l example.txt

You can use chown to open a single file

To change the owner of a file, the simplest way you can use chown to do this is sudo chown username filename. This syntax can be used as sudo chown username username filename. username refers to the username of the user to whom you wish to grant the file, while filename refers to the name the file is. Here’s how it works in practice:

sudo chown someone_else example.txt

You can’t change the ownership group of files by doing this, it only changes the owner. A different syntax is required to modify the group owner – sudo:chown?groupname filename

This is the case in this particular instance:

sudo chown :group2 example.txt

Both commands can be combined into a single command to modify the user and group ownership:

sudo chown me:group1 example.txt

Chown facilitates the transfer of ownership to multiple files

sudo chown someone_else:group2 example1.txt example2.txt

You can also use the same technique to verify ownership of multiple files:

ls -l example1.txt example2.txt

The process can be too cumbersome for many files, even if you combine multiple file names in one command. It is better to modify the owner of all files in a directory.

By adding a “-R” flag to the command chown, this can be achieved. This causes chown’s to go through all the directories and then recursively alter the file owner. Let’s see how it works:

sudo chown -R someone_else:group2 examples

You can also use the “recursive” flag to verify the owner of files located in the examples directory.

ls -l -R examples

UID allows you to modify file ownership

Administrators who manage many users quickly tire of having to enter user names over and over again. One typo in any user name can cause chown to malfunction, which will slow down things significantly.

The user ID is a better option. A four-digit number that is assigned to every user, beginning at 1000 and increasing up. This number is easier to input than a string. It also makes it less difficult for users to miss important information.

This method is easy to use: Simply replace your username with the UID:

sudo chown 1001 example.txt

You can check the user’s UID quickly with the id command if you are not sure. You can find the id command here enter id -u username To view the ID unique to that user.

You can also extend this method to group names. Use the id command to get the user’s UID and the other groups that they are a member of.

id someone_else

We have several group ids that the specific user is part of. This is how chown can be used to change the file’s group or assign a new owner:

sudo chown 1001:1003 example.txt

The chown command: What else can you do?

Most of the most common uses for chown have been demonstrated. It is now possible to change the users or groups who own files using a variety of methods. This is not all the capabilities of the command.

The official man pages provide a description of how to use the command as well as a list of all the arguments that you could put into it. You can view the man page by typing man chown at the terminal.

What is the Use of a Chown?

If your only computer user is you, you won’t need to use the chown command. If you are using Linux in a business setting (e.g. a server at a company or university), then you will need to learn the chown command chmodIt is vital that you () are available.

It is possible to assign ownership to groups and users separately or in combination statements. It can be used with UIDs which are more user-friendly and make it easy to manage even complex hierarchies.