chown(1) [osf1 man page]
chown(1) General Commands Manual chown(1) NAME
chown - Changes the owner of files or directories SYNOPSIS
chown [-fhR] owner [:group] file... The chown command changes the owner of the specified files or directories to the specified user name or user ID. STANDARDS
Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry standards as follows: chown: XCU5.0 Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information about industry standards and associated tags. OPTIONS
[Tru64 UNIX] Turns off error reporting. [Tru64 UNIX] If file is a symbolic link, chown -h file changes the owner of the symbolic link. The chown file format changes the owner of the file referenced by the symbolic link. Descends recursively through its directory arguments, setting the specified owner. OPERANDS
The pathname of the file for which ownership is to be changed. A user ID and optional group ID to be assigned to file. The owner portion of this operand must be a user name from the user database or a numeric user ID. Either specifies a user ID to be given to each file named by one of the file operands. If a numeric owner operand exists in the user database as a user name, the user ID number associated with that user name will be used as the user ID. If the group portion of this operand is present, it must be a group name from the group database or a numeric group ID. Either spec- ifies a group ID to be given to each file. If a numeric group operand exists in the group database as a group name, the group ID number associated with that group name will be used as the group ID. DESCRIPTION
[Tru64 UNIX] Only a user with superuser authority can use the chown command. The owner argument must be a valid user name or a valid numerical user ID. The optional group argument must be a valid group name or a valid numerical group ID. EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned: The chown command executed successfully and all requested changes have been made. An error occurred. EXAMPLES
To change the owner of the file program.c, enter: chown steffan program.c The user access permissions for program.c now apply to steffan. As the owner, steffan can use the chmod command to permit or deny the other users access to program.c. See the chmod command for details. ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables affect the execution of chown: Provides a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value from the default locale is used. If any of the internationalization vari- ables contain an invalid setting, the utility behaves as if none of the variables had been defined. If set to a non-empty string value, overrides the values of all the other internationalization variables. Determines the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to multibyte characters in arguments). Determines the locale for the for- mat and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error. Determines the location of message catalogues for the processing of LC_MESSAGES. FILES
Contains user names and numeric user IDs. SEE ALSO
Commands: chgrp(1), chmod(1), passwd(1) Functions: chown(2), chmod(2) Files: passwd(4) Standards: standards(5) chown(1)
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chown(2) System Calls Manual chown(2) NAME
chown, lchown, fchown - Changes the owner and group IDs of a file SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h> int chown( const char *path, uid_t owner, gid_t group ); int lchown( const char *path, uid_t owner, gid_t group ); int fchown( int filedes, uid_t owner, gid_t group ); STANDARDS
Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry standards as follows: chown(): POSIX.1, XPG4, XPG4-UNIX fchown(): POSIX.1, XPG4-UNIX lchown(): POSIX.1, XPG4-UNIX Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information about industry standards and associated tags. PARAMETERS
Specifies the name of the file whose owner ID, group ID, or both are to be changed. When the path parameter refers to a symbolic link, the behaviors of the chown() and the lchown() functions differ. The chown() function changes the ownership of the file pointed to by the sym- bolic link. The lchown() function changes the ownership of the symbolic link file itself. Specifies a valid open file descriptor. Speci- fies a numeric value representing the owner ID. Specifies a numeric value representing the group ID. DESCRIPTION
The chown(), lchown() and fchown() functions change the owner and group of a file. A process can change the value of the owner ID of a file only if the process has superuser privilege. A process can change the value of the file group ID if the effective user ID of the process matches the owner ID of the file, or if the process has superuser privilege. A process without superuser privilege can change the group ID of a file only to the value of its effective group ID or to a value in its sup- plementary group list. If the value of the owner ID is changed and the process does not have superuser privilege, the set-user ID attribute (the S_ISUID bit) of a regular file is cleared. The set-user ID attribute (S_ISUID bit) of a file is cleared upon successful return if: The file is a regular file. The process does not have superuser privilege. The set-group ID attribute (S_ISGID bit) of a file is cleared upon successful return if: The file is a regular file. The process does not have superuser privilege. If the owner or group parameter is specified as (uid_t)-1 or (gid_t)-1 respectively, the corresponding ID of the file is unchanged. Upon successful completion, the chown(), lchown(), and fchown() functions mark the st_ctime field of the file for update. RETURN VALUES
Upon successful completion, the chown(), lchown(), and fchown() functions return a value of 0 (zero). Otherwise, a value of -1 is returned, the owner and group of the file remain unchanged, and errno is set to indicate the error. ERRORS
If the chown() and lchown() functions fail, errno may be set to one of the following values: Search permission is denied on a component of path. The path parameter is an invalid address. The owner or group ID is not a value supported by this implementation. Too many links were encountered in translating path. The length of the path argument exceeds PATH_MAX or a pathname component is longer than NAME_MAX. The path parameter does not exist or is an empty string. A component of path is not a directory. The effective user ID does not match the ID of the owner of the file, and the calling process does not have appropriate privilege and _POSIX_CHOWN_RESTRICTED indicates that such privilege is required. The named file resides on a read-only file system. The process' root or current directory is located in a virtual file system that has been unmounted. If the fchown() function fails, errno may be set to one of the following values: The file descriptor filedes is not valid. The owner or group ID is not a value supported by this implementation. RELATED INFORMATION
Functions: chmod(2) Commands: chown(1) Standards: standards(5) delim off chown(2)