CHOWN("1") manual page
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chown - change file owner and group
chown [OPTION]... [OWNER][:[GROUP]]
FILE...
chown [OPTION]... --reference=RFILE FILE...
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 performs 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.
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
- --dereference
- affect the referent of each symbolic link (this is the
default), rather than the symbolic link itself
- -h, --no-dereference
- affect
each symbolic link 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.
- --no-preserve-root
- do not
treat ‘/’ specially (the default)
- --preserve-root
- fail to operate recursively
on ‘/’
- -f, --silent, --quiet
- suppress most error messages
- --reference=RFILE
- use
RFILE’s owner and group rather than specifying OWNER:GROUP values
- -R, --recursive
- operate on files and directories recursively
- -v, --verbose
- output a diagnostic
for every file processed
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 missing, but changed to login
group if implied by a ‘:’ following a symbolic OWNER. OWNER and GROUP may
be numeric as well as symbolic.
- 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".
Written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.
Report
bugs to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org>.
Copyright © 2008 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 redistribute it. There
is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
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.
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