How to Change Permissions and Owners via Command Line

In this tutorial, you will learn how to change permissions and owners using Linux commands chmod and chown. By doing so, you’ll have better management in team-based projects.

Why You Need to Change Permissions and Owners in Linux

Linux is a multi-user operating system, so more than one person can work on the same computer at the same time. What’s great, the system can be accessed locally or remotely. That’s why developers often use this OS for group projects.

In such a large environment, we need to set file permissions and ownership, so only specific users can access our data. This way, we can protect sensitive information and prevent unwanted changes from happening.

Fortunately, thanks to chmod and chown commands, it is easy to edit permissions and owners in Linux. But before we begin to learn how to use them, make sure you have access to the command line. You can launch it by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T.

How to Change File and Folder Permissions

We will be using the chmod command to change file and folder permissions in Linux. But first, you need to be aware that there are three types of users who can interact with a file:

• Owner — the user who creates and owns a file or folder.
• Group — all users who are members of the same group.
• Others — all other users on the system who are neither the owner nor members of a group.

To see permissions and owners of a specific file, you can run this command:

ls -1 [file name]

The result will look like this:

-rwxrw–rw- 1 user user 0 Jan 19 12:59 myfile.txt

Let’s break the output down to see what each field means:

• “-rwxrw-rw-“ — this part of the line represents the file permissions. To understand it better, we have to divide it into four groups: (–), (rwx), (rw-), and (rw-).
  • The first group indicates the file type. Our example shows a hyphen, which represents a regular file. If we are inspecting a directory, the hyphen will be replaced by d.
  • The three characters after the file type represent the owner’s file permissions. In this example, we can see that the owner can read (r), write (w), and execute (x) the file.
  • The next three characters are the group’s file permissions. We can conclude that the group can read (r) and write (w), but cannot execute the file. This is because the last character is a hyphen instead of the letter x.
  • The last group is others’ file permissions. Based on our example, this type of user cannot execute the file, but they are allowed to read and write.
• 1 – the number of hard links. A hard link is an additional name for an existing file.
• user user – the owner and group owner of the file.
• 0 – the size of the file in bytes.
• Jan 19 12:59 – the last modification date.
• myfile.txt – the name of the file/folder.

How to Use chmod Command

Let’s say someone in the group is getting bash: permission denied error and we want to change Linux file permissions from -rwxrw-rw- to -rwx-r–r–. Simply enter this line:

chmod 744 [file name]

By executing this command, the owner can read, write, and execute the file (rwx). However, group and others are only allowed to read (r–).

At this point, you might wonder why we are using a three-digit number (744) after the chmod command.

The number determines the file permissions. Read, write, and execute are represented by a numerical value:

• r (read) – 4
• w (write) – 2
• x (execute) – 1

So if you want to give all permissions (rwx) to a user, we need to add read (4), write (2), and execute (1). Therefore, rwx is equal to 7.

Meanwhile, since group and others are only allowed to read the file, we give them 4.

Remember, the owner’s permissions always come first, then followed by group and others. That’s why we enter 744. 

Here is a list of the most common file permissions:

Value	Numeric Value	Explanation
-rw-------	600	Owner can read and write. Group and others have no permission.
-rw-r--r--	644	Owner and read and write. Group and others have read only rights.
-rw-rw-rw-	666	Owner, group and others can read and write.
-rwx------	700	Owner can read, write and execute. Group and others have no permission.
-rwx--x--x	711	Owner can read, write and execute. Group and others can execute.
-rwxr-xr-x	755	Owner can read, write and execute. Group and others can read and execute.
-rwxrwxrwx	777	Owner, group and others can read, write and execute.

Common permissions for directories:

Value	Numeric Value	Explanation
drwx------	700	Only owner can read and write to the directory
drwxr-xr-x	755	Owner, group and others can read the directory, but only the owner can write.

Changing the Owners of Files and Folders

To change the owner of a file and folder, we will be using the chown command. We have a detailed tutorial, if you’d like to learn more about chown command, but this is the basic syntax:

chown [owner/group owner] [file name]

Let’s say we have a file named “myfile.txt.” If we want to set the owner of the file to “hostinger,” we can use this command:

chown hostinger myfile.txt

However, if we want to change the group owner of the file to “clients,” we’ll enter this line instead:

chown :clients demo.txt

Notice that we use a colon (:) before “clients” to indicate that it is a group owner.

Now, to change both the owner and group owner at the same time, the syntax would be like this:

chown hostinger:clients myfile.txt

The main rule is that the owner should come before the group owner, and they have to be separated by a colon.

Using Options with chmod and chown Commands

Option is an additional command to change the output of a command.

One of the most popular options that you can combine with chmod and chown is -R (Recursive). This Linux option allows you to edit permissions or owners of all files and subdirectories inside a specific directory.

If you want to use an option, you have to place it right after the chmod/chown command.

Take a look at this example:

chown -R user /etc/myfiles

After you enter the above command, the owner can read, write, and execute all files and subdirectories inside the /etc/myfiles directory. The command also gives read and execute permissions to group and others.

Aside from -R, the following options are often used with chmod and chown commands:

• -f or force. The command line will ignore any errors and apply the chmod and chown commands.
• -v (verbose) option gives you diagnostics of all files that are processed by the command.
• -c (changes) is similar to the -v option. However, it will only provide information when changes were successfully made.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you have learned how to use chmod and chown commands to change permissions and owners in Linux. We also provided the basic syntax and several useful options that you can combine with either of these commands.

To learn more about Linux command line, you can read our article on basic bash commands.

If you have any questions, feel free to comment below!