1.3 KiB
1.3 KiB
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Friday, April 11, 2025 |
chown
Change the owner of system files and directories.
Basic syntax: chown <owner:group> filename.
# Change file owner
chown user1 doc.txt
# Change owner and group
chown user1:developers document.txt
# Change only the group
chown :staff shared_folder/
# Do so recursively for dirs
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/
TODO: Partition into separate entry on groups:
When a user account in Linux is created the system also creates a group with the same name as the user (known as the primary group or user private group).
Because of the above, you will often change owndership to yourself with:
chown thomas:thomas some_dir
See groups:
groups
# thomas realtime docker input wheel adb plugdev
When reassigning users and groups, it's safest to use the actual name. But each user/group also has a numeric representation, corresponding to UID:GID.
The first regular, non-system user created on most Unix distributions is 1000 but this isn't universal. Likewise his group will be 1000.
See your UID/GID and the GIDs of the groups you're in:
$ id
uid=1000(thomas) gid=1000(thomas) groups=1000(thomas),959(realtime),966(docker),994(input),998(wheel),1001(adb),1002(plugdev)