Change folder permissions and ownership
I would like the user to have full rights on this folder (as well as all sub-directories and files in it):
currently owned by root. I have found numerous posts (in this forum and elsewhere) on how to do this for files but I can’t find a way to do it for whole folders.
9 Answers 9
Use chown to change ownership and chmod to change rights.
As Paweł Karpiński said, 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.
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.
As enzotib mentioned, you need to use sudo to change the ownership from root to yourself.
Note that if you use chown : (Note the left-out group), it will use the default group for that user.
If you want to change only the group, you can use:
BEWARE of recursively taking ownership of ANY directory. Think before you leap. Don’t be chown copypastin’ from the internet, kids. Just because you want to install a node package and it won’t let you, don’t sudo chown -R just because the fist hit from googling the error message says to. Reckless sudo chown -R -ing can kill your OS.
It needs to be said that using the -R option only applies to files and folders that exist in the directory already. It does NOT apply to future creations. For example, if you create another folder or file as root within the folder you’ve already changed permissions on, you will have the same experiences you’re having now until you chmod\chown them again.
Make the current user own everything inside the folder (and the folder itself):
very helpful for newbies (like me) when don’t know what to type in ‘usergroup’ for sudo chown
If you prefer, this can be done with a GUI as well. You will need to open Nautilus as root to do so. Press Alt + F2 to access the «Run Applications» dialog and enter gksu nautilus
Next, browse to and right click on the folder you would like to modify. Then, select «Properties» from the context menu. You can now select the user or group that you would like to be the «Owner» of the folder as well as the permissions you would like to grant them. Finally, press «Apply Permissions to Enclosed Files» to apply the changes recursively.
Though it seems this does not always work for some operations in a deep folder tree. If it does not work use the appropriate terminal command.