chown(1B) SunOS/BSD Compatibility Package Commands chown(1B)NAME
chown - change owner
SYNOPSIS
/usr/ucb/chown [-fR] owner[.group] filename...
DESCRIPTION
chown changes the owner of the filenames to owner. The owner can be either a decimal user ID (UID) or a login name found in the password
file. An optional group can also be specified. The group can be either a decimal group ID (GID) or a group name found in the GID file.
In the default case, only the super-user of the machine where the file is physically located can change the owner. The system configura-
tion option {_POSIX_CHOWN_RESTRICTED} and the privileges PRIV_FILE_CHOWN and PRIV_FILE_CHOWN_SELF also affect who can change the ownership
of a file. See chown(2) and privileges(5).
OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
-f Do not report errors.
-R Recursively descend into directories setting the ownership of all files in each directory encountered. When symbolic links are
encountered, their ownership is changed, but they are not traversed.
USAGE
See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of chown when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2**31 bytes).
FILES
/etc/passwd Password file
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
|Availability |SUNWscpu |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
SEE ALSO chgrp(1), chown(2), group(4), passwd(4), attributes(5), largefile(5), privileges(5)SunOS 5.10 21 Jun 2004 chown(1B)
Check Out this Related Man Page
CHOWN(8) BSD System Manager's Manual CHOWN(8)NAME
chown -- change file owner and group
SYNOPSIS
chown [-fhvx] [-R [-H | -L | -P]] owner[:group] file ...
chown [-fhvx] [-R [-H | -L | -P]] :group file ...
DESCRIPTION
The chown utility changes the user ID and/or the group ID of the specified files. Symbolic links named by arguments are silently left
unchanged unless -h is used.
The options are as follows:
-H If the -R option is specified, symbolic links on the command line are followed. (Symbolic links encountered in the tree traversal
are not followed.)
-L If the -R option is specified, all symbolic links are followed.
-P If the -R option is specified, no symbolic links are followed. This is the default.
-R Change the user ID and/or the group ID of the specified directory trees (recursively, including their contents) and files. Beware of
unintentionally matching the ``..'' hard link to the parent directory when using wildcards like ``.*''.
-f Do not report any failure to change file owner or group, nor modify the exit status to reflect such failures.
-h If the file is a symbolic link, change the user ID and/or the group ID of the link itself.
-v Cause chown to be verbose, showing files as the owner is modified. If the -v flag is specified more than once, chown will print the
filename, followed by the old and new numeric user/group ID.
-x File system mount points are not traversed.
The -H, -L and -P options are ignored unless the -R option is specified. In addition, these options override each other and the command's
actions are determined by the last one specified.
The owner and group operands are both optional, however, one must be specified. If the group operand is specified, it must be preceded by a
colon (``:'') character.
The owner may be either a numeric user ID or a user name. If a user name is also a numeric user ID, the operand is used as a user name. The
group may be either a numeric group ID or a group name. If a group name is also a numeric group ID, the operand is used as a group name.
The ownership of a file may only be altered by a super-user for obvious security reasons.
EXIT STATUS
The chown utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
COMPATIBILITY
Previous versions of the chown utility used the dot (``.'') character to distinguish the group name. This has been changed to be a colon
(``:'') character so that user and group names may contain the dot character.
On previous versions of this system, symbolic links did not have owners.
The -v and -x options are non-standard and their use in scripts is not recommended.
SEE ALSO chgrp(1), find(1), chown(2), fts(3), symlink(7)STANDARDS
The chown utility is expected to be IEEE Std 1003.2 (``POSIX.2'') compliant.
HISTORY
A chown utility appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX.
BSD February 21, 2010 BSD