File owned by "root"

TentativeChaos · 03-09-2008, 05:00 PM

Ok so I made a folder with the terminal and now I can't do anything to the file because it says that the owner is "root" and that's not me. I am the administrator of the computer and everything though.

cmnorton · 03-09-2008, 05:05 PM

You need to become root. If this is a Debian-based system, then
sudo chown -R your-name:your-name full-path-to-folder

For example

sudo chown -R tsmith:tsmith /some-path/some-folder

If this is an RPM-based system, like Fedora, CentOS, or RHEL (and there are more), then su to root, and issue the chown command above but without the sudo prefix.

TentativeChaos · 03-09-2008, 05:07 PM

I'm using Ubuntu

pwc101 · 03-09-2008, 05:14 PM

Ubuntu is a Debian-based system. The command should work. If it doesn't, try become root as follows:

Code:

su -
Password:
<enter password>
chown -R tsmith:tsmith /some-path/some-folder

where tsmith:tsmith is your username and your group.

TentativeChaos · 03-09-2008, 05:21 PM

worked thanks