CHOWN(8) BSD System Manager's Manual CHOWN(8)NAMEchown - change file owner and group
SYNOPSISchown [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-f] [-h] owner[:group] file [...]
chown [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fh] :group file [...]
DESCRIPTIONchown 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.)
-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 Don't report any failure to change file owner or group, nor modi-
fy the exit status to reflect such failures.
-h Change the user ID and/or the group ID on symbolic links. The -R
and -h options are mutually exclusive.
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.suid to zero.
Only the superuser is permitted to change the owner of a file.
The chown utility exits 0 on success or >0 if an error occurred.
SEE ALSOchgrp(1), find(1), chown(2), lchown(2), fts(3), symlink(7)STANDARDS
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.
The chown command is expected to be IEEE Std 1003.2 ("POSIX.2") compli-
ant.
MirOS BSD #10-current May 20, 2007 1