[X-Unix] Changing owner globally

[Stroller]

On Jul 1, 2004, at 4:21 pm, Stephen Jonke wrote:

> I know this is possible, but I don't know how to format the command 
> and want to make sure I have it right. My sisters Mac running 10.3.4 
> was originally set up with a particular use (her Ex) as the admin and 
> so lots of files are owned by his username. I want to remove his 
> account and change all files on the system owned by him to be owned by 
> her. What is the find (or other) command I should use to do this in 
> one fell swoop?

I think something like this should do the trick:

   $ sudo find ./ -user bastard_bloke -exec chown steves_sister \{} \;

You'll need to ensure she is an admin before you perform this.

> I presume I should first change ownership and then delete the account 
> (what happens if you delete the account of a user that has ownership 
> of files that remain on the system?)

The files are still owned by his numerical UID.

Compare:
   ~ $ ls -l /Users/
   total 0
   drwxrwxrwt   8 root      wheel     272 16 May 20:18 Shared
   drwxr-xr-x  13 stroller  stroller  442  4 Nov  2003 stroller

and:
   ~ $ ls -ln /Users/
   total 0
   drwxrwxrwt   8 0    0    272 16 May 20:18 Shared
   drwxr-xr-x  13 501  501  442  4 Nov  2003 stroller

Were I to remove Stroller from the system, this would prolly look like:
   ~ $ ls -l /Users/
   total 0
   drwxrwxrwt   8 root      wheel     272 16 May 20:18 Shared
   drwxr-xr-x  13 501  501  442  4 Nov  2003 stroller

If I had other users on the system the illustration would be more 
explicit, but I'm sure you can work it out.

Stroller.