chown and/or chmod to restore permissions on files moved from another drive by root.

Shay · 04-12-2007, 08:20 AM

I backed up some files by moving them as root from my home directory to a slave drive. I have now moved those files from the slave drive back into my home directory and want to give them the same permissions/ownership they had before being moved from my home directory to the slave drive.

TIA

pbaldera · 04-12-2007, 08:33 AM

If you did not preserved the permissions and ownership the first time you copied them, I don't believe there is a way to restore them. You should have used something like "tar" or "rsync" to preserve the attributes.

Shay · 04-12-2007, 08:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pbaldera

If you did not preserved the permissions and ownership the first time you copied them, I don't believe there is a way to restore them. You should have used something like "tar" or "rsync" to preserve the attributes.

Nothing special about the permissions and ownership of the files. They were whatever the default is for new files.

pbaldera · 04-12-2007, 08:43 AM

If that is the case your permissions are probably the same they were before, and you should only change the the ownership back. Just do a recursive chown on your home dir. chown -R <yourusername>:<yourgroup> /home/<yourhomedir>. Do this as root.

tredegar · 04-12-2007, 08:47 AM

As these files now belong to root, you'll have to be root to be permitted to change the ownership / group back to yourself, like this:
chown yourusername:yourgroup filename

Edit: If you are going to use the -R option as pbaldera recommends, you need to be very careful with your syntax & spelling, because if you accidentally type

Code:

chown -R <yourusername>:<yourgroup> / home/<yourhomedir>

when you are root, you will hose your system. (Notice the space after "/" and before "home")