change folder owner(many folders/files)

[elian85]

i used to work as root for a while and saved many files in the home directory of a user. now i need to have full access to these files.

i can look each file up if it belongs to the root or to the normal user. but its more then 300gb. is there a command which changes the owner of the directory and all subdirectories and all files in these directories??

ty

[terr9898]

You can use the 'chown -R user:group *' to recursively change the files and directory to the user:group.

Use 'man chown' for more details.

[crackers]

The safest way to do this is to (as root) use chown -R username:group /home/username where the user's home directory is the same name as the user. Just using "*" while you're in /home/username will miss a lot of important "hidden" files (filename starts with .) and the home directory itself (/home/username). And, if you happen to be in the wrong directory, can really mess up your system if you accidentally change the ownership of system files.

[kosmosik]

try using find with xargs...

$ find -user username /home/otherusername | xargs chown otherusername:othergroup

[kosmosik]

oh and as of size - it does not matter that it is 300gb, such process can be slower with 300kb of files it just depends how many of this files system will have to process (it does not modify the files itself, it modifies theirs attributes only).

[elian85]

thx for your help. though i didnt understand ur descriptions at first, i was able to look it up in my oreilly book. it is quite hard for a linux noob^^.

for those who might be interested in this and know as little about linux as i do i ll sum up was important for me:

the command:
$ chown bitbjoern blub
assigns the folder blub to the user bitbjoern. i was locked in as root cuz the folders belonged to root.
$ chown -R bitbjoern blub
assigns the folder blub, all subfolders and all files included to the user bitbjoern.

so.... i used
$ cd /home
$ chown -R bitbjoern bitbjoern
i transfered the ownership off all files in the home directiory "bitbjoern" to the user "bitbjoern". i guess i could ve used
$ chown -R bitbjoern /home/bitbjoern
as well but i didnt want to test it.


thx a lot for helping me. big and fast help. and it took 2 seconds(6237 items 380,9gb)^^.