Change Oracle file Ownership Linux Tips by Burleson Consulting

The chown (change owner) command can be used to change ownership of a file or directory.  The syntax is very similar to chgrp.

# ls -l

total 12

-rw-rw-r--    1 tclark   authors      2229 Jan 13 21:35 declaration.txt
-rw-rw-r--    1 tclark   authors      1310 Jan 13 17:48 gettysburg.txt
-rw-rw-r--    1 tclark   authors       360 Jan 13 17:48 preamble.txt

# chown abe gettysburg.txt         

# ls -l

total 12

-rw-rw-r--    1 tclark   authors      2229 Jan 13 21:35 declaration.txt
-rw-rw-r--    1 abe      authors      1310 Jan 13 17:48 gettysburg.txt
-rw-rw-r--    1 tclark   authors       360 Jan 13 17:48 preamble.txt

Just like with chgrp we see that chown accepts the username of the user who should get ownership and the file or directory to change.  Again we could list multiple files or directories here with spaces separating them.

The chown command can be used to change the group ownership instead of the user ownership of a file or directory.  If you wish to use chown to change the group ownership you can list a group preceded with either a colon (:) or a period (.).  Here's an example of how to use chown to change the group ownership of a file:

# ls -l
total 12
-rw-rw-r--    1 tclark   authors      2229 Jan 13 21:35 declaration.txt
-rw-rw-r--    1 abe      authors      1310 Jan 13 17:48 gettysburg.txt
-rw-rw-r--    1 tclark   authors       360 Jan 13 17:48 preamble.txt
# chown :presidents gettys*
# ls -l
total 12
-rw-rw-r--    1 tclark   authors      2229 Jan 13 21:35 declaration.txt
-rw-rw-r--    1 abe      presidents     1310 Jan 13 17:48 gettysburg.txt
-rw-rw-r--    1 tclark   authors       360 Jan 13 17:48 preamble.txt

If you wish to simultaneously change both the user and group ownership of a file you can specify the user and group in the format of user:group.

In the following example the user will be changed back to tclark and the group back to authors using a single command.

Using the chown Command to Change File Ownership

# ls -l
total 12
-rw-rw-r--    1 tclark   authors      2229 Jan 13 21:35 declaration.txt
-rw-rw-r--    1 abe      presidents     1310 Jan 13 17:48 gettysburg.txt
-rw-rw-r--    1 tclark   authors       360 Jan 13 17:48 preamble.txt
# chown tclark:authors gettys*
# ls -l
total 12
-rw-rw-r--    1 tclark   authors      2229 Jan 13 21:35 declaration.txt
-rw-rw-r--    1 tclark   authors      1310 Jan 13 17:48 gettysburg.txt
-rw-rw-r--    1 tclark   authors       360 Jan 13 17:48 preamble.txt

Here we see the user and group has been changed with a single command.  Just like with chgrp the chown command will take the ?R (recursive) option and apply the chown command to a directory and its subdirectories.  This should be used with care.

This is an excerpt from "Easy Linux Commands" by Linux guru Jon Emmons.  You can purchase it for only $19.95 (30%-off) at this link.