Linux’s Chown Command: What to Do With It

System administrators are most responsible for managing file permissions and ownership. 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.

How do you verify the ownership of a particular file?

First, learn how to determine the current owner of a file before moving it around between owners or groups. This is as easy as adding the -l flag on a regular, ls command. It includes information about ownership of any file or directory 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, you can use chown. 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 file name. 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

To change both the owner and group ownership of files, you can combine them into one line:

sudo chown me:group1 example.txt

Chown allows you to change the ownership of 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. You now have the ability to change user and group permissions for a particular file using chown. This is not all the capabilities of the command.

The official man pages provide a description and complete list of all arguments that you can use in conjunction with this command. You can view it 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.