Change owner, change the user and/or group ownership of each given File to a new Owner.
Chown can also change the ownership of a file to match the user/group of an existing reference file.
SYNTAX
chown [Options]… NewOwner File…
chown [Options]… :Group File…
chown [Options]… –reference=RFILE File…
If used, NewOwner specifies the new owner and/or group as follows
(with no embedded white space):
[OWNER] [ [:.] [GROUP] ]
Some examples of how the owner/group can be specified:
OWNER
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&qt;&qt; group is
not changed.
OWNER.GROUP
OWNER:GROUP
If the OWNER is followed by a colon or dot and a GROUP (a group
name or numeric group id), with no spaces between them, the group
ownership of the files is changed as well (to GROUP).
OWNER.
OWNER:
If a colon or dot but no group name follows OWNER, that user is
made the owner of the files and the group of the files is changed
to OWNER&qt;&qt;s login group.
.GROUP
:GROUP
If the colon or dot and following GROUP are given, but the owner
is omitted, only the group of the files is changed; in this case,
&qt;chown&qt;&qt; performs the same function as &qt;chgrp&qt;&qt;.
OPTIONS:
-c
–changes
Verbosely describe the action for each FILE whose ownership
actually changes.
–dereference
Do not act on symbolic links themselves but rather on what they
point to.
-f
–silent
–quiet
Do not print error messages about files whose ownership cannot be
changed.
-h
–no-dereference
Act on symbolic links themselves instead of what they point to.
This is the default. This mode relies on the &qt;lchown&qt;&qt; system call.
On systems that do not provide the &qt;lchown&qt;&qt; system call, &qt;chown&qt;&qt;
fails when a file specified on the command line is a symbolic link.
By default, no diagnostic is issued for symbolic links encountered
during a recursive traversal, but see &qt;–verbose&qt;&qt;.
–reference=FILE
Use the user and group of the reference FILE instead of an explicit
NewOwner value.
-R
–recursive
Recursively change ownership of directories and their contents.
-v
–verbose
Verbosely describe the action (or non-action) taken for every FILE.
If a symbolic link is encountered during a recursive traversal on
a system without the &qt;lchown&qt;&qt; system call, and &qt;–no-dereference&qt;&qt;
is in effect, then issue a diagnostic saying neither the symbolic
link nor its referent is being changed.