How can I recursively change the owner of a directory to the user nobody in linux

Question

I would like to change the owner of a directory and all files and directories below it to the user nobody.

I have a /parent_dir with owner root. I want to change the owner to nobody (system user) recursively.

Answer 1

Like this:

sudo chown -R nobody /parent_dir

Answer 2

By using the -R command line parameter of chown.

chown -R nobody /parent_dir

Answer 3

Just as an alternative to the other answers:

sudo find /parent_dir -exec chown nobody {} \;

if you only want to change files you could use -type f or -type d for directories. comes in handy, when you want to chmod stuff.