1CHOWN(1)                         User Commands                        CHOWN(1)
2
3
4

NAME

6       chown - change file owner and group
7

SYNOPSIS

9       chown [OPTION]... [OWNER][:[GROUP]] FILE...
10       chown [OPTION]... --reference=RFILE FILE...
11

DESCRIPTION

13       This manual page documents the GNU version of chown.  chown changes the
14       user and/or group ownership of each given file.  If only  an  owner  (a
15       user  name or numeric user ID) is given, that user is made the owner of
16       each given file, and the files' group is not changed.  If the owner  is
17       followed  by  a  colon  and a group name (or numeric group ID), with no
18       spaces between them, the group ownership of the  files  is  changed  as
19       well.  If a colon but no group name follows the user name, that user is
20       made the owner of the files and the group of the files  is  changed  to
21       that  user's  login  group.   If the colon and group are given, but the
22       owner is omitted, only the group of the files is changed; in this case,
23       chown  performs  the same function as chgrp.  If only a colon is given,
24       or if the entire operand is empty, neither the owner nor the  group  is
25       changed.
26

OPTIONS

28       Change the owner and/or group of each FILE to OWNER and/or GROUP.  With
29       --reference, change the owner and group of each FILE to those of RFILE.
30
31       -c, --changes
32              like verbose but report only when a change is made
33
34       --dereference
35              affect the referent of each symbolic link (this is the default),
36              rather than the symbolic link itself
37
38       -h, --no-dereference
39              affect each symbolic link instead of any referenced file (useful
40              only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink)
41
42       --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP
43              change the owner and/or group of each file only if  its  current
44              owner  and/or  group  match those specified here.  Either may be
45              omitted, in which case a match is not required for  the  omitted
46              attribute.
47
48       --no-preserve-root
49              do not treat `/' specially (the default)
50
51       --preserve-root
52              fail to operate recursively on `/'
53
54       -f, --silent, --quiet
55              suppress most error messages
56
57       --reference=RFILE
58              use  RFILE's  owner and group rather than specifying OWNER:GROUP
59              values
60
61       -R, --recursive
62              operate on files and directories recursively
63
64       -v, --verbose
65              output a diagnostic for every file processed
66
67       The following options modify how a hierarchy is traversed when  the  -R
68       option  is  also  specified.   If  more than one is specified, only the
69       final one takes effect.
70
71       -H     if a command line argument is a symbolic link  to  a  directory,
72              traverse it
73
74       -L     traverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered
75
76       -P     do not traverse any symbolic links (default)
77
78       --help display this help and exit
79
80       --version
81              output version information and exit
82
83       Owner  is  unchanged  if  missing.   Group is unchanged if missing, but
84       changed to login group if implied by a `:' following a symbolic  OWNER.
85       OWNER and GROUP may be numeric as well as symbolic.
86

EXAMPLES

88       chown root /u
89              Change the owner of /u to "root".
90
91       chown root:staff /u
92              Likewise, but also change its group to "staff".
93
94       chown -hR root /u
95              Change the owner of /u and subfiles to "root".
96

AUTHOR

98       Written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.
99

REPORTING BUGS

101       Report chown bugs to bug-coreutils@gnu.org
102       GNU coreutils home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
103       General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>
104       Report chown translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>
105
107       Copyright  ©  2010  Free Software Foundation, Inc.  License GPLv3+: GNU
108       GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
109       This is free software: you are free  to  change  and  redistribute  it.
110       There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
111

SEE ALSO

113       chown(2)
114
115       The full documentation for chown is maintained as a Texinfo manual.  If
116       the info and chown programs are properly installed at  your  site,  the
117       command
118
119              info coreutils 'chown invocation'
120
121       should give you access to the complete manual.
122
123
124
125GNU coreutils 8.4                  June 2018                          CHOWN(1)
Impressum