Linux: How to change folder ownership

I'm testing Wordpress on a server and had difficulty uploading images in WP which I figured was due to permission. FTP uploads work fine.

The hosting company emailed saying, "assign ownership as username:apache recursively". Using SSH, I logged in and tried different parameters, it didn't work.

Any idea how can I do this? The last time I worked with Unix was over 7 years ago and forgotten things

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ehnde

Try this:

chown -R username /path/to/folder

Then you might need to follow up with chmod. I'm not sure of the permissions...be careful if it's internet facing.

Everyone

man chown

Essendon

Everyone wrote: »

man chown

WTF was that?! Is that a real Linux command?

P.S. I am completely ignorant about Linux

powerfool

Essendon wrote: »

WTF was that?! Is that a real Linux command?

P.S. I am completely ignorant about Linux

Yes... `man` is a command for reading manuals on other commands. Syntax:

man <command>

Actually, if you are on a Linux system and want to learn more about the `man` command, run:

man man

Everyone

powerfool wrote: »

Yes... `man` is a command for reading manuals on other commands. Syntax:

man <command>

Actually, if you are on a Linux system and want to learn more about the `man` command, run:

man man

That always makes me giggle.

You have to check this out if you've never seen it... guest@xkcd
Type "man cat" in there.

tiersten

ehnde wrote: »
Try this:
chown -R username /path/to/folder
Then you might need to follow up with chmod. I'm not sure of the permissions...be careful if it's internet facing.

You can change the username and group together instead of doing chown then chgrp. Only do it on directories that need it.
"chown -R username:apache /path/to/folder"

You'll probably need to allow group access as well so do this as well for the relevant directories that need it.
"chmod -R g+rwx /path/to/folder"

Be aware that this will mean that the webserver has full rights to everything in the directories you change. If there are other sites hosted on that machine then they'll also be able to write to your directories.