Does chown always require sudo?

Question

Why does an owner of a file in Ubuntu need to run sudo in order to execute chown.

Running it without sudo results in an "Operation not permitted" error messge.

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 24 '15 at 19:34

You only have to run sudo if you change the owner or the group to a group you don't belong to. You don't need sudo to change the group to a group you already belong to. Note that this is specified in the POSIX standard.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 24 '15 at 19:27

2

File permissions are stored in the parent directory. You have to have w (write) access to the parent directory in order to change permissions, rename or delete files.

ls -ld .

will show the directory permissions.

answered Sep 24 '15 at 19:27

waltinator

36,399

Very clear answer. Noted the w access. – Ade Malsasa Akbar Oct 25 '18 at 16:27

Does chown always require sudo?

2 Answers2