chown Command: Tutorial & Examples
Change the owner of a file or directory
The chown
command is a Unix and Linux command used to change the ownership of a file or directory. It stands for "change owner." The chown
command allows you to change the
owner of a file or directory, as well as the group owner.
Here is the basic syntax for the chown
command:
chown owner file
Here, owner
is the name of the user or group that you want to set as the owner of the file or directory. file
is the name of the file or directory whose ownership you want to
change.
You can also specify the group owner using the following syntax:
chown owner:group file
Here, group
is the name of the group that you want to set as the group owner of the file or directory.
You can use the -R
option to recursively change the ownership of a directory and all of its contents. For example:
chown -R owner:group directory
This would change the ownership of directory and all of its contents to the specified owner and group.
Note that you must have the appropriate permissions to use the chown
command. Only the owner of a file or directory, or a user with superuser privileges, can change its
ownership.