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The files and directories of Linux systems all belong to someone. You can change their owner with the chown command. We show you how.
Each file belongs to a user and a group
Linux is a multi-user system. The operating system allows multiple user accounts to be defined and any valid user to log on to the computer. In addition, multiple users can use a single computer at the same time.
To maintain a record of the files belonging to which user and to enhance security, Linux uses the concept of ownership. Each file belongs to an owner – a user – and to a group.
When a file is created, its owner is the user who created it. The group to which the file belongs (the "owner" group) is the current group of the user. Users and groups have names, as well as numeric identities, called User ID (or Unique ID) (UID) and Group ID (GID).
When you create a file, it belongs to you and belongs to your current group. Usually, it is the group to which you have connected. By default, this is a group that shares the same name as your user name and that was created during your creation as a user on the system.
You can use the chown command to change the property values. You can define a new owner, a new group or a new owner and a new group at the same time. The owner of a file can change the property of the group, but only root can change the property of the user because it involves another user. Without root privileges, you may not have another system user "adopt" a file.
Why would you want to change ownership?
Here are some examples of situations where you may want to do this:
If you are transferring files between different Linux or Unix operating systems, you will need to replace the owners of users and groups with the new owners of users and groups of the account under which you want to use them. files on the new Linux computer.
A user can leave your organization and all his files will be under the responsibility of another staff member. You will need to replace the owner and owner of the group with the staff member who is now responsible for these files.
You can create a script that will be used by a specific user.
You can create a file or directory connected as root, but you want it to be accessible to a specific user.
Viewing your groups, UID and GID
AT list groups you are, you can use the groups command.
groups
For a list of groups, their numeric identifiers, and your UID and GID, use the id command:
login
You can use some options with ID to narrow the output.
-u: List your UID.
-g: List your effective GID (current).
-nu: List your user name.
-ng: List the name of your current group.
id -u
id -g
id -nu
id -ng
Viewing the property of a user on a file
To see the owners of a file or directory, use the -l option (long list) with ls.
ls -l
We can see that the name dave appears twice in the list. The leftmost aspect tells us that the owner of the file is a user called dave. The rightmost dave tells us that the file belongs to a group that also calls dave.
By default, when a Linux user is created, he is added to a private group named for his user name. They are the only member of this group.
This executable file belongs to the user mary and the group to which the file belongs is mary's private group.
ls -l
This file belongs to the oscar user, but the group it belongs to is called researchlab. This means that other members of the researchlab group can access this file, based on the file permissions set for members of that group.
Change the property of the user
Let's see some examples. This command will change the ownership of the file while.c by the user.
sudo chown mary while.c
We can use ls to see the changes made to the properties of the file.
ls -l while.c
You can use chown to change the ownership of multiple files at once.
sudo chown mary getval.c global.c goto.c
This changes the ownership of the user on the three files.
ls -l getval.c global.c goto.c
You can use wildcards to select groups of files. This command will change the user property on all files starting with the letter "c".
sudo chown mary c *. *
All files will now have Mary as the owner. Note that none of the properties of the group have been modified.
ls -l mary c *. *
Let's change the property of a directory. We simply pass the directory name to chown instead of a file name.
sudo chown mary ./archive/
To check the property properties of the directory, we use ls, but we also use the -d (directory) option. This lists the directory properties, not the files that it contains.
ls -l -d ./archive/
To change the ownership of all files in a directory, you can use the -R (recursive) option. This option will change the ownership of the user on all files in the archive folder.
sudo chown -R mary ./archive/
Now let's look at the files in the archive directory.
ls -l ./archive/
As can be expected, all files now belong to Mary.
Change group owner
There are different ways to change the ownership of the group.
To change the group property at the same time as you change the user property, pass the new owner name and the new group name with a colon ":" separating them. The group must already exist.
sudo chown mary: researchlab charm.c
The owner of the user and the group to which the file belongs have both been modified.
ls -l charm.c
An abbreviated way to change the ownership of the group to the current group of the new owner, just provide the two points and omit the name of the group.
sudo chown mary: caps.c
ls -l caps.c
The ownership of the user and the property of the group have been changed to mary.
To change only the property of the group, precede it with two points and omit the user name. The owner of the user will not be modified.
sudo chown: researchlab at.c
ls -l at.c
The property of the group has been changed, but the ownership of the user remains the same.
Using Chown with UID and GID values
You can use UID and GID numeric values with the chown command. This command will set the user and group property on mary.
sudo chown 1001: 1001 at.c
ls -l at.c
Possession, that is nine tenths of the law
Or they say. But under Linux, ownership is an important part of file security, with file permissions providing the rest. Use the chown and chmod commands to secure access to files on your system.