How to properly recursively chown files (including hidden dirs)

Question

This conundrum is caused by running git pull from root.

There are various reasons for me to do so... I want my device to update code when booting up, and rc.local is run by root.

It all works mostly fine (npm install tends to fail when run by root, but that's a whole 'nother topic), the problem arises when I try to use the git repository with a non-root user afterward... some of the git files have been written by root, so now I can't use it anymore (permission denied).

So I'd like to recursively chown it back but there doesn't seem to be anything that really works on all of the little git files. I tried the -R flag and ./**/* path.

My guess is that neither of those techniques descend into dot-directories.

Solution

The following command works for me in Ubuntu. It changed all the files and directories ownership recusively

sudo chown -R someuser:somegroup YourDir

Comments

[jimmij]

What shell are you using? In bash you need to set shopt -s dotglob in order to match hidden files by * or **.

[Steven Lu]

@jimmij good to know, thanks (you can probably put that as an answer)

[Peter Cordes]

Did you chown -R *, instead of chown -R .?

[Richard]

I tried sudo chown -R me:me . and when I ls -al all my files are still owned by root. Why does this not work?

[vdegenne]

@Richard did you try using an absolute path or ./ ?