NAME

       chown - manual page for chown 9.1

SYNOPSIS

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

DESCRIPTION

       Change  the  owner  and/or  group  of  each FILE to OWNER and/or GROUP.  With --reference,
       change the owner and group of each FILE to those of RFILE.

       -c, --changes
              like verbose but report only when a change is made

       -f, --silent, --quiet
              suppress most error messages

       -v, --verbose
              output a diagnostic for every file processed

       --dereference
              affect the referent of each symbolic link (this is the default),  rather  than  the
              symbolic link itself

       -h, --no-dereference
              affect  symbolic  links instead of any referenced file (useful 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

       --no-preserve-root
              do not treat '/' specially (the default)

       --preserve-root
              fail to operate recursively on '/'

       --reference=RFILE
              use RFILE's owner and group rather than specifying OWNER:GROUP values

       -R, --recursive
              operate on files and directories recursively

       The following options modify how a hierarchy is traversed  when  the  -R  option  is  also
       specified.  If more than one is specified, only the final one takes effect.

       -H     if a command line argument is a symbolic link to a directory, traverse it

       -L     traverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered

       -P     do not traverse any symbolic links (default)

       --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 ':' following a symbolic OWNER.  OWNER and GROUP may be numeric as well as
       symbolic.

EXAMPLES

       chown root /u
              Change the owner of /u to "root".

       chown root:staff /u
              Likewise, but also change its group to "staff".

       chown -hR root /u
              Change the owner of /u and subfiles to "root".

       GNU   coreutils   online   help:   <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>   Report  any
       translation   bugs   to    <https://translationproject.org/team/>    Full    documentation
       <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/chown> or available locally via: info '(coreutils)
       chown invocation'

AUTHOR

       Written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright © 2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc.  License GPLv3+:  GNU  GPL  version  3  or
       later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
       This  is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.  There is NO WARRANTY,
       to the extent permitted by law.