chown is not changing symbolic link

Question

I'm trying to change the user/group of a symbolic link with the command:

$ chown -h myuser:mygroup mysymbolic/

But it's not changing. I'm logged in as root. The current user/group is set to root:root. What went wrong?

Which operating system do you use?Acoording to the manaul page,-h option takes affect only on systems that can change the ownership of symbolic link. — Jichao, Nov 09 '09 at 13:09
Anything that ends with `/` is a directory. You mean `mysymbolic`, which is the symbolic link, not `mysymbolic/` which is probably the directory it points to. — David Schwartz, Dec 05 '17 at 11:11

rizidoro · Answer 1 · 2014-05-09T17:35:54.360

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I was putting a slash in the end of target:

chown -h myuser:mygroup mysymbolic/

just removed the slash in the end and works. Here's the correct way:

 chown -h myuser:mygroup mysymbolic

edited May 09 '14 at 17:35

answered Nov 09 '09 at 13:16

rizidoro

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doesn't work for me on ubuntu – Radek Sep 25 '10 at 01:07
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Wow, this took me hours to find. – defines Apr 19 '11 at 11:36
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@Radek It worked for me on Ubuntu so long as I remembered the `-h` flag. – IQAndreas Jun 11 '13 at 15:04
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Works for me on Ubuntu **with** `-h` and **without** the trailing slash. – friederbluemle Feb 12 '14 at 02:44
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Thank goodness you found out what the reason was! Cheers – zigojacko Mar 25 '15 at 17:11
Had the same problem but wasn't putting the slash. Turns out that -h arguement is very important! – Antony D'Andrea May 11 '15 at 09:03
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I can't believe after 4 years, I have bumped into my past self suffereing the same problem, the missin '-h'! – Antony D'Andrea Jul 13 '15 at 09:49
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@AntonyD'Andrea well, you're certainly _older_ ... :-P – pepoluan Mar 16 '16 at 10:53

score 32 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 09 '09 at 13:08

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I've tried this myself and it works for me. If you have the -h it changes the owner of the symbolic link, but if you dont then it changes the owner of the file itself and not the link.

But it doesnt seem to work of the symbolic link is linked to a directory

answered Nov 09 '09 at 13:08

Arto Uusikangas

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For what it's worth, the man page on OS X is a lot clearer on the -h option than the one on (Arch) Linux. “-h If the file is a symbolic link, change the user ID and/or the group ID of the link itself.” vs. “-h, --no-dereference affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file (useful only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink)” – Matijs Jul 13 '14 at 22:50

score 8 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 30 '13 at 16:43

I was unable to chown a directory even with -h but using the full path worked.

# ls -al
drwxr-xr-x 2 deploy deploy 4096 Dec 30 10:29 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 deploy deploy 4096 Dec 30 08:59 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root   root     32 Dec 30 09:02 apps -> /u/apps/
# chown -h deploy:deploy apps
# ls -al
drwxr-xr-x 2 deploy deploy 4096 Dec 30 10:29 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 deploy deploy 4096 Dec 30 08:59 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root   root     32 Dec 30 09:02 apps -> /u/apps/
# chown -h deploy:deploy apps/
# ls -al
drwxr-xr-x 2 deploy deploy 4096 Dec 30 10:29 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 deploy deploy 4096 Dec 30 08:59 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root   root     32 Dec 30 09:02 apps -> /u/apps/
# pwd 
/var/www/html
# chown -h deploy:deploy /var/www/html/apps
# ls -al
drwxr-xr-x 2 deploy deploy 4096 Dec 30 10:29 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 deploy deploy 4096 Dec 30 08:59 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 deploy deploy   32 Dec 30 09:02 apps -> /u/apps/

score 5 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 09 '09 at 13:08

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Is the target a file or a directory?

If it is a directory then try -H (upper case H)

answered Nov 09 '09 at 13:08

the target is a directory – Nov 09 '09 at 13:09
see my edited reply about directory – Nov 09 '09 at 13:13
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Sorry for the thread necromancy, but I'd like to point out that the correct syntax is with the lowercase 'h'. – Jun 18 '10 at 14:07

score 4 · Answer 5 · edited Sep 05 '18 at 08:18

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simply.

chown -h myuser:mygroup <symlink> [without trailing slash]

should be enough and work!

edited Sep 05 '18 at 08:18

vigilantwindy

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answered Dec 05 '17 at 11:02

Aziz Zoaib

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score 3 · Answer 6 · edited Jul 15 '12 at 17:16

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Recreate that link by myuser at myuser's home, and mv this link to the target location by sudo.

For example: (as myuser), ln -s somedir/ linkname (will be a broken link if somedir/ doesn't exist in user's directory)

Then, sudo mv linkname targetlocation (will become a valid link provided targetlocation/somedir/ exists)

edited Jul 15 '12 at 17:16

killermist

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answered Apr 26 '12 at 09:15

wangdong

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Your answer is without detail and hard to fully understand. Please consider revising your answer to provide more detail. – James Mertz Jul 13 '12 at 04:20

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Aug 11 '16 at 05:24

For Solaris (verified on S11.3) for a symbolic link to a directory you will need to run

root@ac11x017:/var/tmp$ ls -lal dumpdir
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root          16 Jun 15 09:08 dumpdir -> /data/dumpdir/
root@ac11x017:/var/tmp$ chown -RP oracle:oinstall dumpdir
lrwxrwxrwx   1 oracle   oinstall      16 Jun 15 09:09 dumpdir -> /data/dumpdir/

score 1 · Answer 8 · edited Aug 11 '20 at 16:44

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It was the same for me until I ran:

chown -R user:group file.so >>

It worked, though I'm not sure as -R is for directories.

edited Aug 11 '20 at 16:44

Worthwelle

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answered Aug 11 '20 at 16:23

Newbie

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If you chown a symlink like that it actually affects the referenced files. If you want to change the symlink itself you need to use the switch `-h`, or –no-dereference – Layne Bernardo Aug 15 '20 at 01:15

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Sep 16 '14 at 17:46

I had a similar problem. For me, I could not chmod the symbolic link even as root regardless how I called chmod. To add confusion to this, nautilus was showing the owner/group as nothing. The owner was just blank. So I tried to change the symbolic link using nautilus running as root since chmod wasn't working and nautilus crashed!!

But I think I figured out the problem. The directory the symbolic link was pointing to had different permissions than the symbolic link. So I chmod'ed the target directory (using -h) to my user/group name. Then chmod'ed the symbolic link to the same and it worked! And viewing the symbolic link's details in nautilus (with root permissions) now no longer crashes.

So for others having a similar problem, check the permissions of the target directory/file and make sure it is compatible with the permissions you are setting the symbolic link to.

score 1 · Answer 10 · edited Nov 01 '15 at 20:23

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Note that changing the owner of a symlink can only work if the target is accessible by the new user you want to assign it to.

For instance, if your target is inside a folder that the user you want to assign it to doesn't have enough rights, the ln -s command behavior is such that it will do nothing at all.

edited Nov 01 '15 at 20:23

DavidPostill

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answered Nov 01 '15 at 19:12

AnomalySmith

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chown is not changing symbolic link

10 Answers10