From Linux Man Pages
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. If only an owner (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 owner is followed by a colon 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 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 and group are given, but the owner is omitted, only the group of the
files is changed; in this case, chown performs the same function as chgrp. If only a colon is given, or if the
entire operand is empty, neither the owner nor the group is changed.
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 (this is the default), rather than the symbolic link itself
-h, --no-dereference
affect each symbolic link instead of any referenced file (useful only on systems that can change the own-
ership 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 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.
EXAMPLES
chown root /u
Change the owner of /u to "root".
chown root:staff /u
Likewise, but also change its group to "staff".
chown -hR root /u
Change the owner of /u and subfiles to "root".
REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org>.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright � 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software. You may redistribute copies of it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
RELATED
chown(2)
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.
CATEGORY