The chown command can be used to change the owner of a file or directory. Let's say /tmp/foo.txt is owned by John Doe.

~]$ ls -l /tmp
-rw-r--r--. 1 john.doe john.doe 123 Sep 25 08:52 foo.txt

john.doe or root can use the chown command to update foo.txt to be owned by someone else. In this example, John Doe updates foo.txt to be owned by jane.doe.

[john.doe@server1 ~]$ chown jane.doe /tmp/foo.txt

Now foo.txt is owned by Jane Doe.

~]$ ls -l /tmp
-rw-r--r--. 1 jane.doe john.doe 123 Sep 25 08:52 foo.txt

Resursive

The -R or --recursive flag can be used to change the ownership of every file at and below a directory. In this example, every file at and below the /tmp directory will be updated to be owned by root.

[root@server1 ~]$ chown --recursive root /tmp

Change Owner and Group

The chgrp (change group) command can be used to change the group of a file or directory. Or, the owner and group can be changed using the chown command, like this.

~]$ chown jane.doe:admins /tmp/foo.txt