Hi! I recently backed up my home directory on my system with about 200 users using cp -rf /home /root. I recently had the entire old /home directory deleted. Now I issue the cp -rf /root/home /home command and it seems that all the files and directories now belong to the group root and owner group. Is there any way that I can restore ownership to respective owners without using chown on each directory.

Thanks.

You will have to 'chown' each directory, since your copying reset all ownership.
Just write a shell script that will recurse each home directory and based on the home directory name, reset all the ownership.

For example ONLY, something similar to the following... (be careful)
In the future use 'tar' to backup.

You should have used cp -a source destintation. It preserves the permissions, ownership, and group of all files.

Hi! Thanks for the reply I give your script a try. Hopefully it works and next time I'll use the cp -a Thanks A lot guys.

Hi! mjmwired,

I tried your recursive script with no luck. Is it something I am doing wrong?
I simply named the script permiss and cut and paste your script above into it. I then gave it execute permissions and used sh permiss to execute it. However I get the following:

[root@localhost root]# sh permiss
chown: `ageraldo:ageraldo': invalid user
chown: `cvyas:cvyas': invalid group
chown: `dmartin01:dmartin01': invalid group
chown: `dsmith01:dsmith01': invalid group
chown: `ediaz:ediaz': invalid user
chown: `Ejanjua:Ejanjua': invalid user
chown: `fdiaz01:fdiaz01': invalid group
chown: failed to get attributes of `/home/gisrael/*': No such file or directory
chown: `goddo:goddo': invalid user
chown: `ianwar:ianwar': invalid group
chown: `mhernandez04:mhernandez04': invalid user
chown: failed to get attributes of `/home/obou/*': No such file or directory
chown: `rrosemin:rrosemin': invalid group
chown: `Sscott:Sscott': invalid user

What am I doing wrong with the script. Thanks.

That was just an idea, not a guaranteed solution. I made some assumptions:
I thought that each user had his own group.
I thought that each user's home directory was his his/her username.

What you require is something more complex. You will have to read in '/etc/passwd' and '/etc/group' and either write your own script or manually make the changes.

You could try using a period instead of a colon to separate user and group. If you have the typical "users" group you might try this modification of the script:

for u in `ls /home`
do
chown -R $u.users /home/$u/
done

Thanks for the help guys I'll give it a shot.

Example:

#!/bin/sh
for u in `ls /test`
do
chown $u:GID -R /test/$u/.
done


Replace /test with /home or wherever other folder you want updated.

Replace GID with a group GID from your system (check /etc/group for local groups).

I HIGHLY suggest you test this first. Also just realized this thread is 4 years old.