How to use the chown command: 2-Minute Linux Tip

Hi, this is Sandra Henry-Stocker, author of the “Unix as a Second Language” blog on NetworkWorld.
In this Linux tip, we’re going to look at chown (rhymes with shown) sometimes pronounced chown (rhymes with clown).
The chown command simply changes a file’s owner or both owner and group. You need to use sudo to do this or be running as root. Try a command like this to make another user the owner of a file you own and you’ll see the problem:
Run the same command with sudo and you should be OK
To change both the owner and group, put the arguments together like this:
If you like, you can copy the owner and group from another file by using the --reference argument:
The chown command also provides an option for recursion. So, if you want to change the owners for all the files in a given directory and below, you would use a command like this:
$ chown -R nemo:fish /home/nemo
That’s your Linux tip for today.
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