Mounting a filesystem with gid=501 or chgrp filesystem after mounting Is there any difference between mounting a filesystem with `gid=501` mount option vs `chgrp 501 $fs` after it's mounted? I want to know if mounting with gid mount option buys me anything that `chgrp` (as root) on the filesystem after mounting doesn't. I dont think it matters, but this is `debugfs` on a recent 3.x kernel.

Since `debugfs` is a pseudo-filesystem and doesn't represent real storage, any attribute you change won't be remembered across boots (possibly not even across mounts).

For this reason, you should use `mount ... gid=501` rather than adding complexity with a post-mount `chgrp -R 501 ...`.

(In practical terms there will be little difference, assuming of course that `debugfs` implements `chown` and/or `chgrp` operations.