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In this post, let’s learn how to use chgrp and chown commands to change group and user ownership of a directory

On a Linux server, by default, the group owner of a file or directory is the primary group of the user who created the file directory. And it is highly likely in most cases the primary group and the user share the same name

Let’s say we need to change the group and user ownership of the directory /home/chris/mars to root user, below are the steps we need to execute

Step1: Switch to root user

#switch to the root user
su - root

Note: In order to change the group owner of a file or directory, one must be the user owner of the file AND be a member of the group to which we are changing ownership or else be the root user. Also, remember that only the root user can change the user ownership of a file or directory.

Step2: Use chgrp to change the group owner and chown to change the user owner

#Using chgrp to change the group owner
chgrp root /home/chris/mars
#Using chown to change the user owner
chown root /home/chris/mars

OR
Step3: Use chown to change both group owner and user owner at the same time

#using chown to change both group and user owner at the same time
chown root:root /home/chris/mars

Here’s a bonus tip for you: The process to change group and user ownership on a file is the same as performing the commands on a directory, making our job easy!