anyone know?

i know that if you need to chown a directory you go:
chown username.[nobody] /path

[nobody] is an example... but how do you chown a directory and all files + directories beneath it with one command?

chown -R <username> /path

-R for Recursive

Be VERY careful with the Recursive attribute!

EG: Doing THIS IS BAD !!!!# chown -R nobody.nobody /

When you mean to do the current directory would do the / root directory and ALL subfolders/files, screwing all set users and groups!

Just thought I'd give you a heads up :)

Funny how simple things can be so destructive when you are root ;)

I agree, watch out where you are and double check what you chown.

^^ The other day I did a huge long rm -rf and accidentally put a space between linux and *, so I deleted everything by mistake

ouch!!!

:(

thanks for teh help and advice

i just hope that i don't end up looking like :eek: after finding out i messed up... GULP!!!

When doing anything recursively make sure you are directly above the directory you are taking action on. For example if you want to remove /home/username DO NOT type rm -rf /home/username instead do cd /home/ then rm -rf username. This will ensure you don't delete full file structures by accident.

And always pay attention to what you're doing. Don't let someone distract you.

Happened to me once...ended up nuking /usr/local/apache/conf instead of deleting the core files in /usr/local/apache...that was a fun time restoring that mess. :D