chown(8) - NetBSD Manual Pages

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CHOWN(8)                NetBSD System Manager's Manual                CHOWN(8)


NAME
chown -- change file owner and group
SYNOPSIS
chown [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fhv] owner[:group] file ... chown [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fhv] :group file ... chown [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fhv] --reference=rfile file ...
DESCRIPTION
chown sets the user ID and/or the group ID of the specified files. Sym- bolic links named by arguments are silently left unchanged unless -h is used. The options are as follows: -H If the -R option is specified, symbolic links on the command line are followed. (Symbolic links encountered in the tree traversal are not followed.) -L If the -R option is specified, all symbolic links are followed. -P If the -R option is specified, no symbolic links are followed. -R Change the user ID and/or the group ID for the file hierarchies rooted in the files instead of just the files themselves. -f Do not report any failure to change file owner or group, nor mod- ify the exit status to reflect such failures. -h If file is a symbolic link, the owner and/or group of the link is changed. -v Cause chown to be verbose, showing files as they are processed. The -H, -L and -P options are ignored unless the -R option is specified. In addition, these options override each other and the command's actions are determined by the last one specified. The default is as if the -P option had been specified. The -L option cannot be used together with the -h option. The owner and group operands are both optional, however, one must be specified; alternatively, both the owner and group may be specified using a reference rfile specified using the --reference argument. If the group operand is specified, it must be preceded by a colon (``:'') character. The owner may be either a user name or a numeric user ID. The group may be either a group name or a numeric group ID. Since it is valid to have a user or group name that is numeric (and does not have the numeric ID that matches its name) the name lookup is always done first. Preceding an ID with a ``#'' character will force it to be taken as a number. The ownership of a file may only be altered by a super-user for obvious security reasons. Unless invoked by the super-user, chown clears the set-user-id and set- group-id bits on a file to prevent accidental or mischievous creation of set-user-id and set-group-id programs. The chown utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
COMPATIBILITY
Previous versions of the chown utility used the dot (``.'') character to distinguish the group name. This has been changed to be a colon (``:'') character so that user and group names may contain the dot character.
SEE ALSO
chflags(1), chgrp(1), find(1), chown(2), lchown(2), fts(3), symlink(7)
HISTORY
A chown utility appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX.
STANDARDS
The chown command is expected to be POSIX 1003.2 compliant. The -v option and the use of ``#'' to force a numeric lookup are exten- sions to IEEE Std 1003.2 (``POSIX.2''). NetBSD 8.0 September 11, 2016 NetBSD 8.0
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