CHOWN(8) | System Manager's Manual | CHOWN(8) |
chown
— change
file owner and group
chown |
[-fhnvx ] [-R
[-H | -L |
-P ]]
owner[:group]
file ... |
chown |
[-fhnvx ] [-R
[-H | -L |
-P ]] :group
file ... |
The chown
utility changes the user ID
and/or the group ID of the specified files. Symbolic links named by
arguments are silently left unchanged unless -h
is
used.
The options are as follows:
-H
-R
option is specified, symbolic links on
the command line are followed and hence unaffected by the command.
(Symbolic links encountered during traversal are not followed.)-L
-R
option is specified, all symbolic links
are followed.-P
-R
option is specified, no symbolic links
are followed. Instead, the user and/or group ID of the link itself are
modified. This is the default. For matching behavior when using
chown
without the -R
option, the -h
option should be used instead.-R
.*
”.-f
-h
-n
-v
chown
to be verbose, showing files as the
owner is modified. If the -v
flag is specified
more than once, chown
will print the filename,
followed by the old and new numeric user/group ID.-x
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 owner and group operands are both optional, however, one must be specified. If the group operand is specified, it must be preceded by a colon (``:'') character.
The owner may be either a numeric user ID or a user name. If a user name is also a numeric user ID, the operand is used as a user name. The group may be either a numeric group ID or a group name. If a group name is also a numeric group ID, the operand is used as a group name.
The ownership of a file may only be altered by a super-user for obvious security reasons. Similarly, only a member of a group can change a file's group ID to that group.
If chown
receives a
SIGINFO
signal (see the
status
argument for
stty(1)), then the current filename as
well as the old and new file owner and group are displayed.
The chown
utility exits 0 on
success, and >0 if an error occurs.
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.
On previous versions of this system, symbolic links did not have owners.
The -v
and -x
options are non-standard and their use in scripts is not recommended.
In legacy mode, the -R
and
-RP
options do not change the user ID or the group
ID of symbolic links.
chgrp(1), chmod(1), find(1), chown(2), fts(3), compat(5), symlink(7)
The chown
utility is expected to be
IEEE Std 1003.2 (“POSIX.2”)
compliant.
A chown
utility appeared in
Version 1 AT&T UNIX.
August 24, 2022 | macOS 14.6 |