CHFLAGS

Section: User Commands (1)
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BSD mandoc

NAME

chflags - change file flags

SYNOPSIS

chflags [-R ] flags file ...

DESCRIPTION

The chflags utility modifies the file flags of the listed files as specified by the flags operand.

The options are as follows:

-R: Traverse a file hierarchy. For each file that is of type directory, chflags changes the flags of all files in the file hierarchy below it followed by the flags of the directory itself.

Symbolic links are not indirected through, nor are their flags altered.

Only the owner of a file or the super-user is permitted to change the low 16-bits in the flags of a file. Only the the super-user is permitted to change the high 16-bits in the flags of a file.

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

FLAGS

Flags may be absolute or symbolic. An absolute flag is an octal number constructed by or'ing the following values:

1: the file should never be dumped

The symbolic flags is a comma separated list of keywords. The following keywords are defined:

dump         cause the file to be dumped when it is next modified

Putting the word ``no'' before an option causes it to be deleted. For example:

nodump       the file should never be dumped