Changing Group Ownership

Changing Group of a File

• Command: chgrp group_name file – Change the group owner of a file.

• Permissions:

  • Root: Can change any file’s group.
  • Regular user: Can only change files they own to groups they belong to.

Example:

• Error if not permitted:

chgrp development /etc/passwd
# chgrp: changing group of '/etc/passwd': Operation not permitted

Changing Group Recursively

• Use -R to change the group of a directory and all its contents:

chgrp -R development test_dir

Viewing Ownership

• ls -l file – Shows basic ownership and permissions.
• stat file – Shows detailed ownership info including UID, GID, and timestamps.

Example: