How to Change File Ownership & Groups in Linux

File ownership and groups for files are fundamental to the Linux operating system. Every file in Linux is managed by a specific user and a specific group.

Figure out who owns the File or Folder, then use either chown or chgrp#

Display ownership and group information using the following command:

$ ls -l ./ashokma.com/index.html
drwxr-xr-x   2 root docker   4096 Mar 23 15:23 ./ashokma.com/index.html

This folder is owned by the root user and belongs to the docker group.

Changing the ownership of a file using chown#

You can change the ownership of a specific file using the chown command. For security purposes only, the root user or members of the sudo group may transfer ownership of a file.

To change the ownership of a file:

$ chown ashokma ./ashokma.com/index.html

$ ls -l ./ashokma.com/index.html
drwxr-xr-x 2 ashokma docker 4096 Mar 23 20:23 ./ashokma.com/index.html

The file index.html is now owned by ashokma.

By default, chown follows symbolic links and changes the owner of the file pointed to by the symbolic link.

If you wish to change ownership of all files inside a directory, you can use the -R option.

$ chown -R ashokma ./ashokma.com/

Changing the group ownership of a file using chgrp#

All users on the system belong to at least one group. You can find out which groups you belong to using the following command:

$ groups ashokma
ashokma : ashokma adm sudo docker

You can then change the group ownership of a specific file using the chgrp command:

$ chgrp ashokma index.html

$ ls -l index.html
drwxr-xr-x 2 ashokma ashokma 4096 Mar 23 21:23 index.html

The file index.html now belongs to the ashokma group.

Changing both the owner and the group using chown#

You can change both the owner and group of a file using just the chown command.

$ chown ashokma:docker index.html

$ ls -l index.html
drwxr-xr-x 2 ashokma docker 4096 Mar 23 21:23 index.html

The file index.html is now owned by ashokma and belongs to the docker group.