.\" DO NOT MODIFY THIS FILE!  It was generated by help2man 1.33.
.TH CHOWN "1" "March 2004" "chown (coreutils) 5.2.1" "User Commands"
.SH NAME
chown \- change file owner and group
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B chown
[\fIOPTION\fR]... \fIOWNER\fR[\fI:\fR[\fIGROUP\fR]] \fIFILE\fR...
.br
.B chown
[\fIOPTION\fR]... \fI:GROUP FILE\fR...
.br
.B chown
[\fIOPTION\fR]... \fI--reference=RFILE FILE\fR...
.SH DESCRIPTION
This manual page
documents the GNU version of
.BR chown .
.B 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,
.B chown
performs the same function as
.BR chgrp .
.SH OPTIONS
.PP
Change the owner and/or group of each FILE to OWNER and/or GROUP.
With \fB\-\-reference\fR, change the owner and group of each FILE to those of RFILE.
.TP
\fB\-c\fR, \fB\-\-changes\fR
like verbose but report only when a change is made
.TP
\fB\-\-dereference\fR
affect the referent of each symbolic link, rather
than the symbolic link itself
.TP
\fB\-h\fR, \fB\-\-no\-dereference\fR
affect each symbolic link instead of any referenced
file (useful only on systems that can change the
ownership of a symlink)
.TP
\fB\-\-from\fR=\fICURRENT_OWNER\fR: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.
.HP
\fB\-\-no\-preserve\-root\fR do not treat `/' specially (the default)
.TP
\fB\-\-preserve\-root\fR
fail to operate recursively on `/'
.TP
\fB\-f\fR, \fB\-\-silent\fR, \fB\-\-quiet\fR
suppress most error messages
.TP
\fB\-\-reference\fR=\fIRFILE\fR
use RFILE's owner and group rather than
the specifying OWNER:GROUP values
.TP
\fB\-R\fR, \fB\-\-recursive\fR
operate on files and directories recursively
.TP
\fB\-v\fR, \fB\-\-verbose\fR
output a diagnostic for every file processed
.PP
The following options modify how a hierarchy is traversed when the \fB\-R\fR
option is also specified.  If more than one is specified, only the final
one takes effect.
.TP
\fB\-H\fR
if a command line argument is a symbolic link
to a directory, traverse it
.TP
\fB\-L\fR
traverse every symbolic link to a directory
encountered
.TP
\fB\-P\fR
do not traverse any symbolic links (default)
.TP
\fB\-\-help\fR
display this help and exit
.TP
\fB\-\-version\fR
output version information and exit
.PP
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.
.SH AUTHOR
Written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.
.SH "REPORTING BUGS"
Report bugs to .
.SH COPYRIGHT
Copyright \(co 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
.br
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
The full documentation for
.B chown
is maintained as a Texinfo manual.  If the
.B info
and
.B chown
programs are properly installed at your site, the command
.IP
.B info coreutils chown
.PP
should give you access to the complete manual.

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