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Peter Stuifzand
Asked: 2009-09-01 01:48:14 +0800 CST

Chown operation not permitted for root

  • 772

I try to chown the owner of a file to root, but I can't. I'm doing this as root. I get the following message:

chown: changing ownership of `ps': Operation not permitted
linux debian root chown

8 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The immutable attribute might be set on the file. Remove it with

    chattr -i <file>
    • 61

  2. Several solution exists, some among them:

    • you have a filesystem does not lets you eg. uid:gid, eg: FAT
    • the drive has been mounted read-only
    • SELinux or other security enforcers apply
    • filesystem is set to read-only mode (xfs_freeze, for example)
    • file has the immutable flag set (man chattr)
    • 14

  3. I had same problem.

    $ chattr -V -i dir
chattr 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Flags of dir set as s----a---------

    Which was not enough. So i added the 'sa'

    $ chattr -V -ais dir
chattr 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Flags of dir set as ---------------
$ chown root dir
$

    Problem solved :)

    • 5

  4. Funny. Did you check the system logs (/var/log/messages, /var/log/syslog, output of dmesg) for any clues?

    Possible reasons:

    • You are running some security-enhanced Linux, such as SELinux. These place restrictions even on what root can do.
    • The file is on a file system that does not support file ownership, such as (V)FAT. Depending on mount options chmod/chown will give you errors.
    • 3

  5. Try this:

    [root@ root]# chattr -ais /bin/ls

    after changing the ownership and group back to root.

    • 3

  6. I had the same problem with a directory, though the problem was that the folder was hosted on an NFS server with root_squash enabled. In that case, if you have root access to the NFS server, just run chown from there.

    If you have the same problem but don't have root on the NFS server (only on the client), then (if you are responsible and know what you are doing) an alternative would be to become the user that owns the local folder (sudo su user.name) on the client and then run chown. (Note: becoming the local user might be overstepping your boundary as an admin though so make sure you know what you are doing).

    • 1

  7. on what kind of Filesystem is the "ps" file you are trying to chown ? Is the fs mounted as ro (readonly) ?

    if you are talking about /bin/ps, on debian it's always like:

    -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 76132 2009-05-28 10:48 /bin/ps*
    • 0

  8. Every "guess" made by other answers is possible. A debugging hint may be to do a strace of the command, and look into the output in order to see what is the real problem in the syscalls itself.

    strace chown root /bin/ps 2>&1 | less
    • 0