CHOWN

Section: Maintenance Commands (8)
Index Return to Main Contents

BSD mandoc
BSD 4  

NAME

chown - change file owner and group  

SYNOPSIS

[-R [-H | -L | -P ] ] [-fh ] owner [:group ] file ...
[-R [-H | -L | -P ] ] [-fh ] :group file ...  

DESCRIPTION

sets the user ID and/or the group ID of the specified files.

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.
-R
Change the user ID and/or the group ID for the file hierarchies rooted in the files instead of just the files themselves.
-f
Don't report any failure to change file owner or group, nor modify the exit status to reflect such failures.
-h
If file is a symbolic link, the owner and/or group of the link is changed.

The -H -L and -P options are ignored unless the -R option is specified. In addition, these options override each other and the command's actions are determined by the last one specified.

The -L option cannot be used together with the -h option.

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.

Unless invoked by the super-user, clears the set-user-id and set-group-id bits on a file to prevent accidental or mischievous creation of set-user-id and set-group-id programs.

The utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.  

COMPATIBILITY

Previous versions of the 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.  

SEE ALSO

chgrp(1), find(1), chown(2), lchown(2), fts(3), symlink(7)  

STANDARDS

The command is expected to be POSIX 1003.2 compliant.


 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
COMPATIBILITY
SEE ALSO
STANDARDS

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 04:30:11 GMT, April 24, 2025