NAME

       chown - change file owner and group

SYNOPSIS

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

DESCRIPTION

       This  manual  page  documents the GNU version of chown.  chown changes the user and/or group ownership of
       each given file.  If only an owner (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 owner is followed by a colon 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 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 and group are given, but  the
       owner  is omitted, only the group of the files is changed; in this case, chown performs the same function
       as chgrp.  If only a colon is given, or if the entire operand is empty, neither the owner nor  the  group
       is changed.

OPTIONS

       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".

AUTHOR

       Written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.

REPORTING BUGS

       GNU coreutils online help: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
       Report chown translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright  ©  2016  Free  Software  Foundation,  Inc.   License  GPLv3+:  GNU  GPL  version  3  or  later
       <http://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.

SEE ALSO

       chown(2)

       Full documentation at: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/chown>
       or available locally via: info '(coreutils) chown invocation'