CHOWN(1) manual page

Table of Contents

## Name

chown - change file owner and group

## Synopsis

chown [OPTION]... OWNER[.[GROUP]] FILE...
chown [OPTION]... .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, according to its first non-option argument, which is interpreted as follows. If only 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 user name is followed by a colon or dot 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 or dot 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 or dot and group are given, but the user name is omitted, only the group of the files is changed; in this case, chown performs the same function as chgrp.

## OPTIONS

Change the owner and/or group of each FILE to OWNER and/or GROUP.

-c, --changes
  be verbose whenever change occurs
--dereference
  affect the referent of each symbolic link, rather than the symbolic link itself
-h, --no-dereference
  affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file (available only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink)
-f, --silent, --quiet
  suppress most error messages
--reference=RFILE
  use the owner and group of RFILE instead of using explicit OWNER.GROUP values
-R, --recursive
  operate on files and directories recursively
-v, --verbose
  explain what is being done
--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 period. A colon may replace the period.

## Reporting Bugs

Report bugs to <bug-fileutils@gnu.org>.

## See Also

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.

Table of Contents

- Name
- Synopsis
- Description
- OPTIONS
- Reporting Bugs
- See Also