chown — change file owner and group
chown [OPTION...] [OWNER][:[GROUP]] FILE...
chown [OPTION...] −−reference=RFILE FILE...
This manual page documents the GNU version of chown. chown changes the user and/or group ownership of each given file. If only an owner (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 owner is followed by a colon 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 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 and group are given, but the owner is omitted, only the group of the files is changed; in this case, chown performs the same function as chgrp. If only a colon is given, or if the entire operand is empty, neither the owner nor the group is changed.
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, −−changeslike verbose but report only when a change is made
−−dereferenceaffect the referent of each symbolic link (this is the default), rather than the symbolic link itself
−h, −−no−dereferenceaffect each symbolic link instead of any referenced file (useful only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink)
−−from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUPchange 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−rootdo not treat `/' specially (the default)
−−preserve−rootfail to operate recursively on `/'
−f, −−silent, −−quietsuppress most error messages
−−reference=RFILEuse RFILE's owner and group rather than specifying OWNER:GROUP values
−R, −−recursiveoperate on files and directories recursively
−v, −−verboseoutput 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.
−Hif a command line argument is a symbolic link to a directory, traverse it
−Ltraverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered
−Pdo not traverse any symbolic links (default)
−−helpdisplay this help and exit
−−versionoutput version information and exit
Owner is unchanged if missing. Group is unchanged if missing, but changed to login group if implied by a `:' following a symbolic OWNER. OWNER and GROUP may be numeric as well as symbolic.
chown root /u
Change the owner of /u to "root".
chown root:staff /u
Likewise, but also change its group to "staff".
chown −hR root /u
Change the owner of /u and subfiles to "root".
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.
| COPYRIGHT |
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Copyright © 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html> This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. |