NAME
chown —
change file owner and
group
SYNOPSIS
chown |
[-R
[-H | -L |
-P]]
[-fhv]
owner[:group]
file ... |
chown |
[-R
[-H | -L |
-P]]
[-fhv]
:group file ... |
chown |
[-R
[-H | -L |
-P]]
[-fhv]
--reference=rfile file
... |
DESCRIPTION
chown sets 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.
-
-
- -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
- Do not 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.
-
-
- -v
- Cause chown to be verbose, showing files
as they are processed.
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 default is as if the
-P option
had been 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; alternatively, both the owner
and group may be specified using a reference
rfile
specified using the
--reference argument.
If the
group operand is specified, it must be preceded
by a colon (``:'') character.
The
owner may be either a user name or a numeric user ID.
The
group may be either a group name or a numeric group
ID. Since it is valid to have a user or group name that is numeric (and does
not have the numeric ID that matches its name) the name lookup is always done
first. Preceding an ID with a ``#'' character will force it to be taken as a
number.
The ownership of a file may only be altered by a super-user for obvious security
reasons.
Unless invoked by the super-user,
chown 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
chown utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error
occurs.
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.
SEE ALSO
chflags(1),
chgrp(1),
find(1),
chown(2),
lchown(2),
fts(3),
symlink(7)
HISTORY
A
chown utility appeared in
Version 1
AT&T UNIX.
STANDARDS
The
chown command is expected to be POSIX 1003.2 compliant.
The
-v option and the use of ``#'' to force a numeric lookup
are extensions to
IEEE Std 1003.2
(“POSIX.2”).