chown(1) [redhat man page]
CHOWN(1) FSF CHOWN(1) NAME
chown - change file owner and group SYNOPSIS
chown [OPTION]... OWNER[:[GROUP]] FILE... chown [OPTION]... :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, according to its first non-option argument, which is interpreted as follows. If only 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 user name is followed by a colon or dot 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 or dot 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 or dot and group are given, but the user name is omitted, only the group of the files is changed; in this case, chown performs the same function as chgrp. OPTIONS
Change the owner and/or group of each FILE to OWNER and/or GROUP. -c, --changes like verbose but report only when a change is made --dereference affect the referent of each symbolic link, rather than the symbolic link itself -h, --no-dereference affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file (available 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 omit- ted, in which case a match is not required for the omitted attribute. -f, --silent, --quiet suppress most error messages --reference=RFILE use RFILE's owner and group rather than the specified OWNER:GROUP values -R, --recursive operate on files and directories recursively -v, --verbose output a diagnostic for every file processed --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 `:'. OWNER and GROUP may be numeric as well as symbolic. AUTHOR
Written by David MacKenzie. REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org>. COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICU- LAR PURPOSE. SEE ALSO
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 chown should give you access to the complete manual. chown (coreutils) 4.5.3 February 2003 CHOWN(1)
Check Out this Related Man Page
CHOWN(8) BSD System Manager's Manual CHOWN(8) NAME
chown -- change file owner and group SYNOPSIS
chown [-fhv] [-R [-H | -L | -P]] owner[:group] file ... chown [-fhv] [-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: -f Don't report any failure to change file owner or group, nor modify the exit status to reflect such failures. -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.) -h If the file is a symbolic link, change the user ID and/or the group ID of the link itself. -L If the -R option is specified, all symbolic links are followed. -P If the -R option is specified, no symbolic links are followed. Instead, the user and/or group ID of the link itself are modified. This is the default. Use -h to change the user ID and/or the group of symbolic links. -R Change the user ID and/or the group ID for the file hierarchies rooted in the files instead of just the files themselves. -v Cause chown to be verbose, showing files as the owner is modified. 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, at least one must be specified. If the group operand is specified, it must be pre- ceded 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. For obvious security reasons, the ownership of a file may only be altered by a super-user. Similarly, only a member of a group can change a file's group ID to that group. DIAGNOSTICS
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 option is non-standard and its use in scripts is not recommended. LEGACY DESCRIPTION
In legacy mode, the -R and -RP options do not change the user ID or the group ID of symbolic links. SEE ALSO
chgrp(1), find(1), chown(2), fts(3), compat(5), 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
March 31, 1994 BSD