Chown not working

Question

On Ubuntu 12.04, the chown command doesn't seem to be working like it should root@server:/var/www/folder/# ls -al Running this puts out drwxr-xr-x 11 776 sftponly 4096 Feb 17 14:08 Other_Folder I need write permissions for the group, so I run: chown -R 776 ./Other_Folder Then when I run ls -al again, the output is still drwxr-xr-x 11 776 sftponly 4096 Feb 17 14:08 Other_Folder

Accepted Answer

`chown` is used to change ownership of the file, not change permissions.

`ls -al` is not showing you who owns the file, just its permissions.

If root owns those files, you'll need to `chown` them properly, before you can change their permissions:

```
chown -R yourname:yourname folderName
```

Then as the owner you can change their permissions:

```
chmod -R 776 folderName
```

Edit: I double checked the syntax and it seems to be right, you'll likely need to use sudo to use them.

Chown not working

Solution

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