chown

CHOWN(1)                              FSF                             CHOWN(1)



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
              like verbose but report only when a change is made

       --dereference
              affect the referent of each symbolic link, rather than the  sym-
              bolic 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)

       --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.

       -f, --silent, --quiet
              suppress most error messages

       --reference=RFILE
              use   RFILE's   owner   and  group  rather  than  the  specified
              OWNER:GROUP values

       -R, --recursive
              operate on files and directories recursively

       -v, --verbose
              output a diagnostic for every file processed

       --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 `:'.  OWNER and GROUP may be
       numeric as well as symbolic.

AUTHOR
       Written by David MacKenzie.

REPORTING BUGS
       Report bugs to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org>.

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
       This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is
       NO  warranty;  not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
       PURPOSE.

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.



chown (coreutils) 4.5.3          October 2003                         CHOWN(1)