# chown recursive?



## jove (Oct 29, 2001)

Hello,

I would like to change the owner of an entire directory structure, including the files.

chown -R otheruser ~origuser/Documents/

only changes the directories in the structure, not the files. How do I include them in the command?


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## jimr (Oct 30, 2001)

however ... both ways work for me.....

???????????????????????????????????????????????????
your demo syntax is a bit strange
chown -R otheruser ~origuser/Documents/

who is other user whois origuser who are you logged in as?

[short answer] do you have permissions to do that?

[long answer] don't do that.

let's say... ~ = $HOME
which it does

so if your user name is joe

then ~/Documents =
/Users/joe/Documents

ls -al ~

gives 

drwx------  97 joe      wheel        3254 Oct 28 23:02 Documents/


as one of the entries


so you want to give the permission to 
sam to read that directory

better to add sam and joe to a group which can read that directory in Netinfo

chown -R :mygroup ~/Directory
chmod 770 ~/Directory


anyway the -R certainly works if you have the permission if not you will have to use sudo.

anyway, changing group ownership and readability is much better than changing the owner.


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## jojo (Nov 8, 2001)

yes ....
and if you want you can do it after su root and take off "/" at end


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## Jadey (Nov 8, 2001)

Just a reply to "try without the backslash". This: /  is a slash, not a backslash. This: \ is a backslash.


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## jimr (Nov 8, 2001)

> _Originally posted by Jadey _
> *Just a reply to "try without the backslash". This: /  is a slash, not a backslash. This: \ is a backslash. *



some nightmare from windows must've attacked my brain...

on top of that   around here \ looks like ¥ (yen mark)   So that is why the japanesr business people thinks using windows will bring them money...


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## Jadey (Nov 8, 2001)

hehehehe


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