Using chown command.


 
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# 8  
Old 12-09-2017
Hello.

My question was :
When using this command with elevated privileges ( after su or sudo ) :
Code:
chown -Rv some_user:users /some_folder/.*

Following the message on screen, the system goes on level higher as shown
Code:
..........
..........
chown /some_folder/../some_other_folder/.......
..........
..........

As "/some_folder/.." is root level, I mess up the system.

What is the good way to change owner for every things including hidden objects starting from /some_folder including all sub-folder.

Any help is welcome
# 9  
Old 12-09-2017
If I understand you correctly.......

Code:
 
 # cd /some_folder
 # chown <new owner> *

would change all files (including hidden IF you have access rights to them) at that level.

Then adding -R switch to that command line would cause the whole tree below that point to also change ownership IF you have access rights to all of that.
# 10  
Old 12-10-2017
Quote:
Originally Posted by hicksd8
If I understand you correctly.......

Code:
 
 # cd /some_folder
 # chown <new owner> *

would change all files (including hidden IF you have access rights to them) at that level.

Then adding -R switch to that command line would cause the whole tree below that point to also change ownership IF you have access rights to all of that.
Ok noted.

But if I remember correctly ( but I may wrong ), I did that command on command line from terminal, on user level for a particular user, ( /home/another_user ).
Code:
sudo chown another_user:users /home/another_user/*

And it seems to me that files/directories which names start with a dot ( hidden object ) was not all modified.
So I retype the command like that :
Code:
sudo chown another_user:users /home/another_user/.*

Then the system was messed up.
I did not imagine that "/home/some_user/.*" could climb up to "/"

Thank you for helping
# 11  
Old 12-11-2017
Quote:
Originally Posted by jcdole
I did not imagine that "/home/some_user/.*" could climb up to "/"
I can only think that you accidentally put a space between / and home when entering the command.
# 12  
Old 12-11-2017
No, it is because .* matches .. and .
Test the glob expansion with echo!
This is for the arguments = start files.
If one of the start files is a directory, chown -R will recurse into it and find ALL files.
These 2 Users Gave Thanks to MadeInGermany For This Post:
# 13  
Old 12-11-2017
Quote:
Originally Posted by jcdole
And it seems to me that files/directories which names start with a dot ( hidden object ) was not all modified.
The problem with your guess is that UNIX doesn't have hidden files.

When you use readdir(), it does not hide dot files. Hiding dot files is not a UNIX filesystem feature, UNIX kernel feature, or UNIX library feature.

Its a shell feature. And ls, grandfathered in from 45 years ago.

Meaning, there are two and only two ways to implicitly exclude dot-files:
  1. Getting the list of files from the shell a la chown -R user:pass path/*
  2. Getting the list of files from ls a la ls | xargs chown -R user:path

The command you listed will never exclude dot-files. Either you did something like the above and omitted it not thinking it relevant, or the dot files have a different owner than you expected, or some filesystem magic like immutable bits is preventing you from changing them.

Just doing ls -l /path/to/.dotfile and posting the result would have solved this argument for good a week ago.
# 14  
Old 12-11-2017
Quote:
Originally Posted by MadeInGermany
No, it is because .* matches .. and .
Test the glob expansion with echo!
This is for the arguments = start files.
If one of the start files is a directory, chown -R will recurse into it and find ALL files.
That was my big mistake.

---------- Post updated at 19:36 ---------- Previous update was at 19:34 ----------

Thank you everybody for helping
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