chown

Give a file or a whole folder to another user and group with chown, and why it needs sudo.

>_ Try it: a simulated Linux, right herenothing runs on your computer

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Examples

sudo chown deploy /srv/site/index.html give one file to deploy
sudo chown -R deploy:deploy /srv/site the whole folder, owner and group
ls -l /srv/site deploy owns it now
touch /srv/site/about.html so deploy can write there without sudo
sudo chown www-data:www-data /srv/site/about.html the web server's user (www-data on Ubuntu)
ls -l /srv/site check the result

How it works

Every file has an owner and a group: ls -l shows them in the third and fourth columns. The owner decides who may change it (with chmod).

chown USER FILE gives the file to USER; chown USER:GROUP sets both; -R does a folder and everything inside. Only root may give files away, so on a server it is sudo chown.

Syntax

sudo chown [-R] USER[:GROUP] FILE...

Options

Option	What it does
`USER`	the new owner
`USER:GROUP`	the new owner and group at once
`-R`	recursive: the folder and everything inside it

Good to know

"Permission denied" in a folder usually means it belongs to someone else: check with ls -ld FOLDER before reaching for sudo every time.
Be careful with -R on system folders: sudo chown -R on the wrong path can break a server.