Linux – How to Change Ownership of Symbolic Links

linuxlnpermissionsrhelsymlink

I am facing some issue with creating soft links. Following is the original file.

$ ls -l /etc/init.d/jboss
-rwxr-xr-x 1 askar admin 4972 Mar 11  2014 /etc/init.d/jboss

Link creation is failing with a permission issue for the owner of the file:

ln -sv  jboss /etc/init.d/jboss1
ln: creating symbolic link `/etc/init.d/jboss1': Permission denied

$ id
uid=689(askar) gid=500(admin) groups=500(admin)

So, I created the link with sudo privileges:

$ sudo ln -sv  jboss /etc/init.d/jboss1
`/etc/init.d/jboss1' -> `jboss'

$ ls -l /etc/init.d/jboss1
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Jul 27 17:24 /etc/init.d/jboss1 -> jboss

Next I tried to change the ownership of the soft link to the original user.

$ sudo chown askar.admin /etc/init.d/jboss1

$ ls -l /etc/init.d/jboss1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Jul 27 17:24 /etc/init.d/jboss1 -> jboss

But the permission of the soft link is not getting changed.

What am I missing here to change the permission of the link?

Best Answer

On a Linux system, when changing the ownership of a symbolic link using chown, by default it changes the target of the symbolic link (ie, whatever the symbolic link is pointing to).

If you'd like to change ownership of the link itself, you need to use the -h option to chown:

-h, --no-dereference affect each symbolic link instead of any referenced file (useful only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink)

For example:

$ touch test
$ ls -l test*
-rw-r--r-- 1 mj   mj   0 Jul 27 08:47 test
$ sudo ln -s test test1
$ ls -l test*
-rw-r--r-- 1 mj   mj   0 Jul 27 08:47 test
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 Jul 27 08:47 test1 -> test
$ sudo chown root:root test1
$ ls -l test*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jul 27 08:47 test
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 Jul 27 08:47 test1 -> test

Note that the target of the link is now owned by root.

$ sudo chown mj:mj test1
$ ls -l test*
-rw-r--r-- 1 mj   mj   0 Jul 27 08:47 test
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 Jul 27 08:47 test1 -> test

And again, the link test1 is still owned by root, even though test has changed.

$ sudo chown -h mj:mj test1
$ ls -l test*
-rw-r--r-- 1 mj mj 0 Jul 27 08:47 test
lrwxrwxrwx 1 mj mj 4 Jul 27 08:47 test1 -> test

And finally we change the ownership of the link using the -h option.

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