How to Change the Owner of a File

1. If you are not the owner of the file or directory, become superuser.

   Only the current owner or superuser can use the chown command to change the owner of a file or directory.

2. Change the owner of a file by using the chown command.

   $ chown newowner filename

   newowner	Name of the new owner of the file or directory.
   filename	File or directory.

3. Verify the owner of the file is changed.

   $ ls -l filename

Example--Changing the Owner of a File

The following example sets the ownership on myfile to the user rimmer.

$ chown rimmer myfile
$ ls -l myfile
-rw-r--r--   1 rimmer   scifi   112640 May 24 10:49 myfile