How to change the owner of a file or directory using chown?
Jun 19, 2025 am 12:25 AM
The way to change the file or directory owner in Linux is to use the chown command. 1. The basic syntax is chown [option] owner] file or directory; 2. Only modify the owner can execute such as chown alice document.pdf; 3. Modify the owner and group at the same time must be separated by a colon, such as chown bob:developers project/; 4. Use the -R parameter to recursively modify the directory and content, such as sudo chown -R charlie:staff myfolder/; 5. Operations usually require administrator permissions, and sudo can be used to increase permissions; 6. You can view the current owner and group through ls -l; 7. Be careful to avoid modifying the system file owner at will to prevent affecting system stability.
On Linux systems, if you want to change the owner of a file or directory, the most common method is to use the chown command. The full name of this command is "change owner", which has powerful functions but not complicated usage.
Basic syntax
The basic format of chown is as follows:
chown [Options] [Owner][:[Group]] File or Directory
You can just change the user, just reorganize, or modify both at the same time.
For example, if you execute:
chown user1 file.txt
The owner of file.txt will become user1 .
Modify the owner of a single file
This is one of the most common operations. You just need to specify the new owner username and target file.
Example:
chown alice document.pdf
This command changes the owner of document.pdf alice .
Note: Executing
chownusually requires administrator permissions, so you may want to prefixsudo, for example:sudo chown alice document.pdf
Modify the owner and group at the same time
Sometimes you also want to modify the group of the file together, and you can add a colon and group name.
Example:
chown bob:developers project/
This sets the owner of project/ directory to bob and the group to developers .
Several common writing methods:
- Change user only:
chown user file - Only reorganize:
chown :group file - Change the user and group at the same time:
chown user:group file
Recursively modify the directory and internal content
If you want to modify the owner of all files and subdirectories in a directory, you need to use the -R parameter (recursion).
Example:
sudo chown -R charlie:staff myfolder/
This command will change myfolder/ directory and all the contents in it into the owner charlie and group staff .
Tips and precautions
- Permissions issue : Ordinary users cannot change the file owner at will unless you are root or use
sudo. - View the current owner : You can use
ls -lto view the current owner and group of a file or directory. - Do not modify the owner of system files randomly : especially system directories such as
/etcand/bin. Incorrect operations may cause the system to be unstable or even fail to start.
Basically that's it. By mastering these basic usages, you can meet most daily scenarios.
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