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