Intro To 'chown' Command In Linux

2023-05-04 - By Robert Elder

     I use the 'chown' command to change the user and group ownership of files and directories.  Here, I have a file that's currently owned by the user 'robert':

ls -l file1.txt

-rw-rw-r-- 1 robert robert 0 May  4 23:54 file1.txt

     This command will change the user ownership of file1.txt from 'robert' to 'mike':

chown mike file1.txt

     And now, you can see that 'file1.txt' is owned by 'mike':

ls -l file1.txt

-rw-rw-r-- 1 mike robert 0 May  4 23:54 file1.txt

     The 'chown' command can also perform the functions of the 'chgrp' command as well.  If we start with 'file1.txt' again with the owner and group set to 'robert':

ls -l file1.txt

-rw-rw-r-- 1 robert robert 0 May  4 23:54 file1.txt

     This command will change both the user and group ownership at the same time from 'robert' to 'mike':

chown mike:mike file1.txt

     And here, you can verify that both the user and group have been set to 'mike':

ls -l file1.txt

-rw-rw-r-- 1 mike mike 0 May  4 23:54 file1.txt

     The file permissions associated with the user and group are located here:

Using 'chown' To Recursively Change Ownership

     Here, I have a directory with a bunch of files that are all owned by the user and group 'robert':

ls -l docs

total 4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 robert robert    0 May  5 00:13 cat.jpg
-rw-rw-r-- 1 robert robert    0 May  5 00:13 dog.jpg
drwxrwxr-x 2 robert robert 4096 May  5 00:13 more-docs
-rw-rw-r-- 1 robert robert    0 May  5 00:13 README.txt

     You can use the '-R' flag with the 'chown' command to recursively change the ownership of all items in a directory:

chown -R mike:mike docs

     And now, you can see that all files in this directory are owned by the user and group 'mike':

ls -l docs

total 4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 mike mike    0 May  5 00:13 cat.jpg
-rw-rw-r-- 1 mike mike    0 May  5 00:13 dog.jpg
drwxrwxr-x 2 mike mike 4096 May  5 00:13 more-docs
-rw-rw-r-- 1 mike mike    0 May  5 00:13 README.txt

     And that's why the 'chown' command is my favourite Linux command.

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