CHOWN linux command manual
CHOWN(1) User Commands 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.
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, rather than the sym-
bolic link itself
-h, --no-dereference
affect each symbolic link instead of any referenced file (use-
ful 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 the 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 ':'. OWNER and GROUP may be
numeric as well as symbolic.
AUTHOR
Written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.
REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to .
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2004 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 coreutils chown
should give you access to the complete manual.
chown (coreutils) 5.2.1 May 2004 CHOWN(1)