CHOWN(1) FSF CHOWN(1)NAMEchown - change file owner and group
SYNOPSISchown [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.
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 speci
fied here. Either may be omitted, 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 speci
fied 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-fileutils@gnu.org>.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying condi
tions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY
or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
SEE ALSO
The full documentation for chown is maintained as a Tex
info 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 (fileutils) 4.1 April 2001 CHOWN(1)
