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CHOWN(1) User Commands CHOWN(1)

NAME

chown - manual page for chown 8.32

SYNOPSIS

chown [OPTION]... [OWNER][:[GROUP]] FILE...
chown [OPTION]... --reference=RFILE FILE...

DESCRIPTION

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.

like verbose but report only when a change is made
suppress most error messages
output a diagnostic for every file processed
affect the referent of each symbolic link (this is the default), rather than the symbolic link itself
affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file (useful only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink)
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
do not treat '/' specially (the default)
fail to operate recursively on '/'
use RFILE's owner and group rather than specifying OWNER:GROUP values
operate on files and directories recursively

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.

if a command line argument is a symbolic link to a directory, traverse it
traverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered
do not traverse any symbolic links (default)
display this help and exit
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.

EXAMPLES

Change the owner of /u to "root".
Likewise, but also change its group to "staff".
Change the owner of /u and subfiles to "root".

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/> Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/> Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/chown> or available locally via: info '(coreutils) chown invocation'

AUTHOR

Written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

August 2022 GNU coreutils 8.32