NAME    [Toc]    [Back]

       chown - change file owner and group

SYNOPSIS    [Toc]    [Back]

       chown [OPTION]... OWNER[:[GROUP]] FILE...
       chown [OPTION]... :GROUP FILE...
       chown [OPTION]... --reference=RFILE FILE...

DESCRIPTION    [Toc]    [Back]

       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    [Toc]    [Back]

       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  symbolic
 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    [Toc]    [Back]

       Written by David MacKenzie.

REPORTING BUGS    [Toc]    [Back]

       Report bugs to <[email protected]>.

COPYRIGHT    [Toc]    [Back]

       Copyright (C) 2001 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    [Toc]    [Back]

       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 (fileutils) 4.1		  March 2002			      CHOWN(1)