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NAME

chown — change file owner and group

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

chown 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.)

-h

Change the user ID and/or the group ID on symbolic links. The -R and -h options are mutually exclusive.

-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.

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 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.

By default, chown clears the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits on the file to prevent accidental or mischievous creation of set-user-ID and set-group-ID programs. This behaviour can be overridden by setting the sysctl(8) variable fs.posix.setuid to zero.

Only the superuser is permitted to change the owner of a file.

EXIT STATUS

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

SEE ALSO

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

STANDARDS

The chown utility is compliant with the IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”) specification.

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.