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        before being able to upvote. Upvoting indicates when questions and answers are useful. (https://stackoverflow.com/help/whats-reputation) What's reputation and how do I get it?  To start gaining reputation, try answering a related question. linux permissions chmod chown file-ownership      Find related question Not now           (https://cdn.sstatic.net/Sites/stackoverflow/Img/apple-touch-icon.png?v=c78bd457575a) (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21951556/changing-the-ownership-of-a-folder-in-linux) changing the ownership of a folder in linux [closed]  (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/ask) Ask Question     (2014-02-22 08:03:34Z) Asked 11 years, 2 months ago  Modified (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21951556/changing-the-ownership-of-a-folder-in-linux?lastactivity) (2023-10-04 13:29:15Z) 1 year, 6 months ago  (Viewed 315,567 times) Viewed 316k times       This question shows research effort; it is useful and clear 71  (This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful)         Save this question. (https://stackoverflow.com/posts/21951556/timeline)    Show activity on this post.   Closed. This question does not meet (https://stackoverflow.com/help/closed-questions) Stack Overflow guidelines . It is not currently accepting answers.         This question does not appear to be about (https://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) a specific programming problem, a software algorithm, or software tools primarily used by programmers . If you believe the question would be on-topic on (https://stackexchange.com/sites) another Stack Exchange site , you can leave a comment to explain where the question may be able to be answered.  Closed (2014-02-22 17:28:04Z) 11 years ago .     (https://stackoverflow.com/posts/21951556/edit) Improve this question     I have a folder in my subdomain which is created through WHM so the owner of that subdomain is not the owner of main domain.  I want to change the owner of one of the folders of subdomain to domain owner. I tried this, but when I check with winscp it shows owner as 500. chown users:user /home/xyz/somnething/photo/   I've tried to change from winscp also, but there is no option for winscp, so I've logged in as root using putty and ran the command from above, but it doesn't help and I am unable to upload any file to subdomain from the main domain, as it returns error "permission denied". $ ls -l /home/xyz/somnething/photo/
total 8 
drwxr-xr-x 2 sujit sujit 4096 Feb 21 23:39 ./ 
drwxr-x--- 5 rohan nobody 4096 Feb 22 02:28 ../   I want to give the ownership of rohan to sujit to have rights to upload file from sujit domain to subdomain rohan Update:  Now it is changing owner to 500   (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/linux) (show questions tagged 'linux') linux  (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/permissions) (show questions tagged 'permissions') permissions  (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/chmod) (show questions tagged 'chmod') chmod  (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/chown) (show questions tagged 'chown') chown  (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/file-ownership) (show questions tagged 'file-ownership') file-ownership      (https://stackoverflow.com/q/21951556) (Short permalink to this question) Share   (https://stackoverflow.com/posts/21951556/edit) Improve this question  Follow  Follow this question to receive notifications      (https://stackoverflow.com/posts/21951556/revisions) (show all edits to this post) edited (2023-10-04 13:29:15Z) Oct 4, 2023 at 13:29    (https://stackoverflow.com/users/18174166/avijit-dey) (Avijit Dey's user avatar)    (https://stackoverflow.com/users/18174166/avijit-dey) Avijit Dey (reputation score) 123 (1 gold badge)  1  1 gold badge (1 silver badge)  1  1 silver badge (10 bronze badges)  10  10 bronze badges     asked (2014-02-22 08:03:34Z) Feb 22, 2014 at 8:03   (https://stackoverflow.com/users/3340072/sachin) (sachin's user avatar)    (https://stackoverflow.com/users/3340072/sachin) sachin sachin (reputation score) 797 (1 gold badge)  1  1 gold badge (5 silver badges)  5  5 silver badges (11 bronze badges)  11  11 bronze badges        1 (number of 'useful comment' votes received) 1   chown -R username:group directory  – (https://stackoverflow.com/users/1521771/underscore) (6,907 reputation) underscore  Commented (2014-02-22 08:08:33Z, License: CC BY-SA 3.0) Feb 22, 2014 at 8:08        (Use comments to ask for more information or suggest improvements. Avoid answering questions in comments.) Add a comment |  (Expand to show all comments on this post)        1 Answer 1   Sorted by:  (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21951556/changing-the-ownership-of-a-folder-in-linux?answertab=scoredesc#tab-top) Reset to default   (scoredesc) Highest score (default)  (trending) Trending (recent votes count more)  (modifieddesc) Date modified (newest first)  (createdasc) Date created (oldest first)            This answer is useful 131  (This answer is not useful)         Save this answer. (Loading when this answer was accepted…)     (https://stackoverflow.com/posts/21951679/timeline)    Show activity on this post.   Use chown to change ownership and chmod to change rights. use the -R option to apply the rights for all files inside of a directory too. Note that both these commands just work for directories too. The -R option makes them also change the permissions for all files and directories inside of the directory. For example sudo chown -R username:group directory   will change ownership (both user and group) of all files and directories inside of directory and directory itself. sudo chown username:group directory   will only change the permission of the folder directory but will leave the files and folders inside the directory alone. you need to use sudo to change the ownership from root to yourself. Edit: Note that if you use chown user: file (Note the left-out group), it will use the default group for that user. Also
You can change the group ownership of a file or directory with the command: chgrp group_name file/directory_name   You must be a member of the group to which you are changing ownership to. You can find group of file as follows  # ls -l file
-rw-r--r-- 1 root family 0 2012-05-22 20:03 file

# chown sujit:friends file   User 500 is just a normal user. Typically user 500 was the first user on the system, recent changes (to /etc/login.defs) has altered the minimum user id to 1000 in many distributions, so typically 1000 is now the first (non root) user. What you may be seeing is a system which has been upgraded from the old state to the new state and still has some processes knocking about on uid 500. You can likely change it by first checking if your distro should indeed now use 1000, and if so alter the login.defs file yourself, the renumber the user account in /etc/passwd and chown/chgrp all their files, usually in /home/, then reboot. But in answer to your question, no, you should not really be worried about this in all likelihood. It'll be showing as "500" instead of a username because o user in /etc/passwd has a uid set of 500, that's all. Also you can show your current numbers using id i'm willing to bet it comes back as 1000 for you.   (https://stackoverflow.com/a/21951679) (Short permalink to this answer) Share   (https://stackoverflow.com/posts/21951679/edit) Improve this answer  Follow  Follow this answer to receive notifications      (https://stackoverflow.com/posts/21951679/revisions) (show all edits to this post) edited (2014-02-22 08:41:07Z) Feb 22, 2014 at 8:41         answered (2014-02-22 08:16:48Z) Feb 22, 2014 at 8:16   (https://stackoverflow.com/users/3150853/jayesh-bhoi) (Jayesh Bhoi's user avatar)    (https://stackoverflow.com/users/3150853/jayesh-bhoi) Jayesh Bhoi Jayesh Bhoi (reputation score 25,981) 26k (17 gold badges)  17  17 gold badges (62 silver badges)  62  62 silver badges (75 bronze badges)  75  75 bronze badges        16   sudo chown -R username:group directory here username is my owner name? an group is? – (https://stackoverflow.com/users/3340072/sachin) (797 reputation) sachin  Commented (2014-02-22 08:23:03Z, License: CC BY-SA 3.0) Feb 22, 2014 at 8:23      (number of 'useful comment' votes received) 7   @sachin if you only give user name then user ownership is changed while group ownership unchanged.so try sudo chown -R username directory  – (https://stackoverflow.com/users/3150853/jayesh-bhoi) (25,981 reputation) Jayesh Bhoi  Commented (2014-02-22 08:25:17Z, License: CC BY-SA 3.0) Feb 22, 2014 at 8:25        it is giving chown: invalid group: `sujit:group' – (https://stackoverflow.com/users/3340072/sachin) (797 reputation) sachin  Commented (2014-02-22 08:26:08Z, License: CC BY-SA 3.0) Feb 22, 2014 at 8:26      (number of 'useful comment' votes received) 1   @sachin remove :group if you not know group name.Also look my updated answer. – (https://stackoverflow.com/users/3150853/jayesh-bhoi) (25,981 reputation) Jayesh Bhoi  Commented (2014-02-22 08:29:07Z, License: CC BY-SA 3.0) Feb 22, 2014 at 8:29        now it is changing owner to 500 – (https://stackoverflow.com/users/3340072/sachin) (797 reputation) sachin  Commented (2014-02-22 08:30:22Z, License: CC BY-SA 3.0) Feb 22, 2014 at 8:30        (Use comments to ask for more information or suggest improvements. 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