chown - manual page for chown 9.1
chown [OPTION]...
[OWNER][:[GROUP]] FILE...
chown [OPTION]... --reference=RFILE FILE...
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
- -f, --silent,
--quiet
- suppress most error messages
- -v, --verbose
- output a diagnostic for every file processed
- --dereference
- affect the referent of each symbolic link (this is the default), rather
than the symbolic link itself
- -h,
--no-dereference
- affect symbolic links 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 '/'
- --reference=RFILE
- use RFILE's owner and group rather than specifying OWNER:GROUP values
- -R,
--recursive
- 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.
- -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.
- 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".
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'
Written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.
Copyright © 2022 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.