Re: chown

[cga2000 <cga2000@optonline.net>]

On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 10:15:54PM EDT, Gilberto Martins wrote:
>    Hi.
> 
>    My question is really very simple, I believe.
> 
>    I have a user called "teste"
> 
>    aluno@maq13:~$ id teste uid=1001(teste) gid=1001(teste)
>    grupos=1001(teste)
> 
>    I am user "aluno" and as so, I create a directory in my own $HOME
> 
>    aluno@maq13:~$ mkdir trash aluno@maq13:~$ ls -ld trash drwxr-xr-x 2
>    aluno aluno 4096 2006-08-14 23:09 trash
> 
>    I want the user called "teste" to be the owner of this directory
> 
>    aluno@maq13 :~$ chown teste trash chown: mudando permissões de
>    `trash': Operação não permitida
> 
>    That means "aluno" cannot do this.
> 
>    Can someone explain me why he can't ?
> 
Presumably because chown doesn't know teste is (?) a test user that you
created for you own personal use.

If it belonged to somebody else, you could dump some highly
objectionable material in the "trash" directory. And thus this "trash"
could be traced back to this other person.

My understanding is that ownership of a file is similar to a signature
and therefore cannot be reassigned by mere mortals. 

Only the "superuser" is allowed to do that.

On my system (debian sarge) "man chown" specifies that the command 

        info coreutils chown

 should give you access to the complete manual.

The "complete manual" does mention that there are systems that allow
non-privileged use of the chown command. 

Apparently linux is not one of them.

Thanks

cga