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:

-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 speci

fied 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 mod

ify 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 own

er is modi

fied. If the -v flag is specified more than once,

chown will
print the filename, followed by the old and new nu

meric
user/group ID.

The -H, -L and -P options are ignored unless the -R option

is specified.
In addition, these options override each other and the com

mand'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 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.

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 April 25, 2003

BSD