CHOWN(1)

NAME
chown - change file owner and group

SYNOPSIS
chown [OPTION]... [OWNER][:[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.

OPTIONS

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, --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 (this is the default)

-h, --no-dereference
    affect each symbolic link instead of any referenced file (useful 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 specified here. Either may be omitted, in which case a match is not required for the omitted attribute.

--no-preserve-root do not treat `/' specially (the default)

--preserve-root
    fail to operate recursively on `/'

-f, --silent, --quiet
    suppress most error messages

--reference=RFILE
    use RFILE's owner and group rather than the specifying OWNER:GROUP values

-R, --recursive
    operate on files and directories recursively

-v, --verbose
    output 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.

-H  if a command line argument is a symbolic link to a directory, traverse it

-L  traverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered

-P  do not traverse any symbolic links (default)

--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 `:' following a symbolic OWNER. OWNER and GROUP may be numeric as well as symbolic.

AUTHOR
Written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.

REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org>.

COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. 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 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.