Change ownership, chmod?

[Andy Cole_1]

Hi, i am new to Unix. And i am using HP UX. Would like to check how do i chaange the ownership from one user account to another user account if the files are scattered all over the system? Can i use one command to change from one owner to another owner? Example, all those files in the system that belongs to apple account, all changes to pear account? thanks

[Geoff Wild]

Actually, you want chown

find -user apple | xargs chown pear {};

Rgds...Geoff

[RAC_1]

Start by reading the man pages of chmod, chown and find commands.

What you are trying to do can be done with a single command. That would as follows.

find . -user apple -type f -exec chown pear {} \;
This would change the ownership of all files to pear. The following command would change the ownership of all directories to pear.

find . -user apple -type d -exec chown pear {} \;

Anil

[Geoff Wild]

oops...

should be:

find / -user apple | xargs chown pear {}

Rgds.....Geoff

[Andy Cole_1]

thanks for all your help.

So for the below command:

find / -user apple | xargs chown pear {}

Will it changes the directory ownership as well?

I would like to change the ownership of the directories and files. Would just one command be able to do all these? thanks

[John Payne_2]

Andy,

Do either of these to get files and directories, except in the find without the pipe to xargs, strip off the '-type' flag for the find command. It does entire heirarchy by default.

John

(You could just do a find '/ -user apple' to get the list first, if you want to verify...)

[Geoff Wild]

Yes - that will do everything...

Just a thought - another option you have - is to delete user apple, then create user pear with apple's old uid.

Rgds...Geoff

[Muthukumar_5]

find command used to collect all files on the search path.

find / -user -type f "*"

will give all files who owner is there.

To change that permission to pear then,

find / -user apple -type f "*" -exec chown pear {} \;

If you want to change directory too then,

find / -user apple \( -type f -o type d \) -exec chown pear {} \;

HTH.

[Andy Cole_1]

Btw, is there any complication if i (the root) change the ownership of one account to another account (from apple account to orange account)?

Would the orange account be able to access all the files and directories that are previously from apple account?

What are the things to take note when changing of ownership? thanks

[Geoff Wild]

For your last question - no complications - only means that apple will no loger be the owner of the files - orange will have access to all the files owned by the previous user - apple.

Now, here's another tip - if apple and orange belong to the same group - say orchard, and the permissions on the file(s)/directory(s) are 664 or 775, then both apple and orange will have write access to the file(s)/directory(s).

Things to take note are - any scripts that say "su - apple -c "some command" will have to be change to su - orange.

Rgds...Geoff

[doug mielke]

You can also use SAM to universally change ownerships.