The chown command

change file owner and group 11 examples from the lessons of the IVski Linux Playground — try them in the terminal next to them.

Options in the examples

-R, --recursive

operate on files and directories recursively

Examples

chown user file

chown user:group file

chown :group file

Change only group

chown student myfile.txt

chown student:student myfile.txt

chown -R student:student directory/

sudo chown root:root sensitive.txt

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/

chown NAME:NAME /home/NAME/projects

Owner and group

sudo chown worker /etc/worker/config.yml

Give the file to the service's user

Lessons that use chown

• chown — Changing Ownership
• Project: New Teammate Script
• Mission: The Service That Won't Stay Up