chown
(1g)
Name
chown - change file owner and group
Synopsis
chown [OPTION]... [OWNER][:[GROUP]] FILE...
chown [OPTION]... --reference=RFILE FILE...
Description
User Commands CHOWN(1)
NAME
chown - change file owner and group
SYNOPSIS
chown [OPTION]... [OWNER][:[GROUP]] FILE...
chown [OPTION]... --reference=RFILE FILE...
DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents the GNU version of chown. chown
changes the user and/or group ownership of each given file.
If only an owner (a user name or numeric user ID) is given,
that user is made the owner of each given file, and the
files' group is not changed. If the owner is followed by a
colon and a group name (or numeric group ID), with no spaces
between them, the group ownership of the files is changed as
well. If a colon but no group name follows the user name,
that user is made the owner of the files and the group of
the files is changed to that user's login group. If the
colon and group are given, but the owner is omitted, only
the group of the files is changed; in this case, chown per-
forms the same function as chgrp. If only a colon is given,
or if the entire operand is empty, neither the owner nor the
group is changed.
OPTIONS
Change the owner and/or group of each FILE to OWNER and/or
GROUP. With --reference, change the owner and group of each
FILE to those of RFILE.
-c, --changes
like verbose but report only when a change is made
-f, --silent, --quiet
suppress most error messages
-v, --verbose
output a diagnostic for every file processed
--dereference
affect the referent of each symbolic link (this is the
default), rather than the symbolic link itself
-h, --no-dereference
affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file
(useful only on systems that can change the ownership
of a symlink)
--from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP
change the owner and/or group of each file only if its
current owner and/or group match those specified here.
Either may be omitted, in which case a match is not
required for the omitted attribute
GNU coreutils 8.16 Last change: March 2012 1
User Commands CHOWN(1)
--no-preserve-root
do not treat '/' specially (the default)
--preserve-root
fail to operate recursively on '/'
--reference=RFILE
use RFILE's owner and group rather than specifying
OWNER:GROUP values
-R, --recursive
operate on files and directories recursively
The following options modify how a hierarchy is traversed
when the -R option is also specified. If more than one is
specified, only the final one takes effect.
-H if a command line argument is a symbolic link to a
directory, traverse it
-L traverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered
-P do not traverse any symbolic links (default)
--help
display this help and exit
--version
output version information and exit
Owner is unchanged if missing. Group is unchanged if miss-
ing, but changed to login group if implied by a ':' follow-
ing a symbolic OWNER. OWNER and GROUP may be numeric as
well as symbolic.
EXAMPLES
chown root /u
Change the owner of /u to "root".
chown root:staff /u
Likewise, but also change its group to "staff".
chown -hR root /u
Change the owner of /u and subfiles to "root".
AUTHOR
Written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.
REPORTING BUGS
Report chown bugs to [email protected]
GNU coreutils home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/core-
utils/>
GNU coreutils 8.16 Last change: March 2012 2
User Commands CHOWN(1)
General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/geth-
elp/>
Report chown translation bugs to <http://translationpro-
ject.org/team/>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License
GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
<http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redis-
tribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted
by law.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
attributes:
+---------------+--------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+--------------------+
|Availability | file/gnu-coreutils |
+---------------+--------------------+
|Stability | Uncommitted |
+---------------+--------------------+
SEE ALSO
chown(2)
The full documentation for chown is maintained as a Texinfo
manual. If the info and chown programs are properly
installed at your site, the command
info coreutils 'chown invocation'
should give you access to the complete manual.
NOTES
This software was built from source available at
https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original
community source was downloaded from
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-8.16.tar.xz
Further information about this software can be found on the
open source community website at http://www.gnu.org/soft-
ware/coreutils/.
GNU coreutils 8.16 Last change: March 2012 3