How to troubleshoot ownership update failure with chown command?

Applies to

• Clustered Data ONTAP 8 
• ONTAP 9
• NFS

Description

This article explains a troubleshooting workflow when chown command against a file or directory does not update the owner.

There are multiple potential causes. Determine which of the following three scenarios apply and then locate the corresponding numbered solution in the Procedure section.

1. User does not currently own the file or directory, and does not have root access to the filesystem - “Operation not permitted” occurs.
2. The user owns the file or directory, but the filesystem employs restricted chown semantics, so that only root may change ownership – “Operation not permitted” occurs.
3. The filesystem implements ntfs security-style, so that unix owner is not defined, and changing the owner with the chown command is not possible. Depending on the configuration of the NFS server, attempts to alter the unix owner may be ignored, resulting in no error message, but also not updating the owner, or they may be refused, resulting in an “Operation not permitted” message.