Cannot chown or chgrp local folder to other user

coxinha · 2007-07-23 18:16:01

Hi,
I'm trying to give the ownership of a directory to another ordinary user (not root) but I'm getting "operation not permitted" error message.

The folder is a local one, created by myself... only root is being able to change it...

I tryed in HPUX and it works... but in my Arch it does not...

Any idea?

ataraxia · 2007-07-23 18:17:38

Only root can chown or chgrp on Linux. (This was designed to prevent users from forcing each other to exceed quota.)

coxinha · 2007-07-23 18:42:27

But, is it possible to change this?

ataraxia · 2007-07-23 18:54:22

No, it's hard-coded into chown / chgrp. I suggest configuring sudo to allow chown if users need to do it.

coxinha · 2007-07-23 19:18:46

But in this case the user would be able to take ownership of any folder... I only want to give the ownership, not retrieve...
Also, isn't it possible to allow this only to specific users?

Last edited by coxinha (2007-07-23 19:26:01)

ataraxia · 2007-07-23 21:13:38

sudo will allow you to only allow certain users to do it.

If you really want it to work like on HP-UX, you'll have to modify the source code to chown / chgrp, as far as I know.

Anybody else have ideas?

FeatherMonkey · 2007-07-23 21:42:05

Couldn't you just make a unique group that was allowed by the users, then they could change the group settings i.e kde in properties.

So if your user skeleton added group foo, and any user belonging to group foo can make a file belong to a group they belong to. Then modify it so all can read, write and execute as long as the share folder is above usr ~ with the right permissions I can't see why it wouldn't work.

The default being user which I presume has it so other users can't view it, Is there any reason why this wouldn't work?

For example as a user I can chgrp optical ~/foo.file and back to users.
But chown wont do it, presumably due to being able to change mal ware to root permissions.

This works as said just hope it makes sense.

Last edited by FeatherMonkey (2007-07-23 22:03:40)

[vEX] · 2007-07-24 08:27:26

If you both are part of the same group you should be able to "chgrp <group> <folder>", it won't work if you're not part of that group though.

Arch Linux

#1 2007-07-23 18:16:01

Cannot chown or chgrp local folder to other user

#2 2007-07-23 18:17:38

Re: Cannot chown or chgrp local folder to other user

#3 2007-07-23 18:42:27

Re: Cannot chown or chgrp local folder to other user

#4 2007-07-23 18:54:22

Re: Cannot chown or chgrp local folder to other user

#5 2007-07-23 19:18:46

Re: Cannot chown or chgrp local folder to other user

#6 2007-07-23 21:13:38

Re: Cannot chown or chgrp local folder to other user

#7 2007-07-23 21:42:05

Re: Cannot chown or chgrp local folder to other user

#8 2007-07-24 08:27:26

Re: Cannot chown or chgrp local folder to other user

Board footer