Chown Command Generator

A Linux tool to easily generate chown commands for changing file ownership between users and groups

rwx

r-x

chmod 755 file.sh

Chown Command Generator

Ownership

Owner

Leave blank to keep current owner

Group

Leave blank to keep current group

Options

Recursive (-R)

Apply changes to all files and directories recursively

Preserve Root (--preserve-root)

Fail to operate recursively on '/'

Reference File (optional)

Use this file's owner and group rather than specifying values

Generated Command

chown --preserve-root [user][:group] filename.txt

What is `chown`?

chown (change owner) is a command-line utility in Unix and Linux systems used to change the owner and group of files and directories. This is an important aspect of file system security and access control.

Understanding File Ownership

In Linux, every file and directory is assigned both an owner and a group. These assignments determine who can access and modify the file:

User ownership: The primary owner of the file
Group ownership: Members of the file's group may have special access

Viewing Ownership

You can view file ownership with the ls -l command:

$ ls -l example.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 user group 1234 Jan 1 12:00 example.txt

The highlighted section shows "user" as the owner and "group" as the group.

Chown Examples

Basic Usage

chown user file.txtChange owner to "user"
chown user:group file.txtChange owner to "user" and group to "group"
chown :group file.txtChange only the group to "group"

Advanced Options

chown -R user:group directory/Recursively change ownership
chown --reference=ref.txt file.txtUse ownership from ref.txt
chown --from=old_owner:old_group new_owner:new_group file.txtOnly change if current ownership matches

Tips & Best Practices

Only the root user or the current owner of the file can change its ownership
Be very careful when using chown -R recursively, especially on system directories
The --preserve-root option prevents accidentally changing ownership of the root directory
For web applications, common ownership patterns include apache:apache, www-data:www-data, or nginx:nginx