Tiny Core Linux

Off-Topic => Off-Topic - Tiny Core Lounge => Topic started by: GNUser on September 16, 2026, 12:19:02 PM

Title: sudo chown not working on a specific link
Post by: GNUser on September 16, 2026, 12:19:02 PM

Hello, Rich, Paul_123, Juanito. After my recent incident involving  filetool.sh -r  leaving behind some root-owned parent directories in my home folder (see https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=28276.msg183832#msg183832), I decided to check all my systems for root-owned items in /home/bruno.

I found a root-owned symlink in one of my machines. I know this is cosmetic because for symlinks what really matters is ownership/permissions of what the link points to. Nevertheless, I'd like to clean it up but am surprised that  sudo chown  is not having the desired effect:

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~$ find . -user root
./.ash_history

~$ ls -l .ash_history
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     staff           20 Sep 15 22:23 .ash_history -> /opt/log/ash_history

~$ sudo chown bruno .ash_history

~$ ls -l .ash_history
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     staff           20 Sep 15 22:23 .ash_history -> /opt/log/ash_history
As you can see above, the chown command seems to have no effect. I already checked, and what the link points to is owned by regular user (not root):

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~$ ls -l /opt/log/ash_history
-rw-r--r--    1 bruno    staff         1554 Sep 16 12:10 /opt/log/ash_history
I'm puzzled why  sudo chown  does not seem to be working here. What's going on?

Title: Re: sudo chown not working on a specific link
Post by: GNUser on September 16, 2026, 12:21:55 PM

Oops. I need the  -h  flag. This works:

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~$ sudo chown -h bruno .ash_historySorry for the noise.