1.\" Copyright (c) 1990, 1991 The Regents of the University of California. 2.\" All rights reserved. 3.\" 4.\" %sccs.include.redist.man% 5.\" 6.\" @(#)chown.8 6.7 (Berkeley) 05/28/92 7.\" 8.Dd 9.Dt CHOWN 8 10.Os BSD 4 11.Sh NAME 12.Nm chown 13.Nd change file owner and group 14.Sh SYNOPSIS 15.Nm chown 16.Op Fl Rf 17.Ar owner Op Ar :group 18.Ar file ... 19.Nm chown 20.Op Fl HRfh 21.Ar :group 22.Ar file ... 23.Sh DESCRIPTION 24.Nm Chown 25sets the user ID and/or the group ID of the specified files. 26.Pp 27The options are as follows: 28.Bl -tag -width Ds 29.It Fl H 30When encountering a symbolic link on the command line, follow it. All other 31symbolic links encountered in the traversal are not followed. 32.It Fl R 33Change the user ID and/or the group ID for the file hierarchies rooted 34in the files instead of just the files themselves. 35.It Fl f 36Don't report any failure to change file owner or group, nor modify 37the exit status to reflect such failures. 38.It Fl h 39When encountering a symbolic link, change the ownership of the object the link 40points to rather than the link itself. 41.El 42.Pp 43With respect to symbolic links, unless the 44.Fl h 45or 46.Fl H 47flags are set, 48.Nm chown 49changes the ownership of the link itself rather than the object it 50points to. 51.Pp 52The 53.Ar owner 54and 55.Ar group 56operands are both optional, however, one must be specified. 57If the 58.Ar group 59operand is specified, it must be preceded by a colon (``:'') character. 60.Pp 61The 62.Ar owner 63may be either a numeric user ID or a user name. 64If a user name is also a numeric user ID, the operand is used as a 65user name. 66The 67.Ar group 68may be either a numeric group ID or a group name. 69If a group name is also a numeric group ID, the operand is used as a 70group name. 71.Pp 72The ownership of a file may only be altered by a super-user for 73obvious security reasons. 74.Pp 75The owner and group of symbolic links are themselves changed instead 76of the file to which the link points. 77.Pp 78The 79.Nm chown 80utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs. 81.Sh COMPATIBILITY 82Previous versions of the 83.Nm chown 84utility used the dot (``.'') character to distinguish the group name. 85This has been changed to be a colon (``:'') character so that user and 86group names may contain the dot character. 87.Sh SEE ALSO 88.Xr chgrp 1 , 89.Xr find 1 , 90.Xr chown 2 , 91.Xr fts 3 92.Sh STANDARDS 93The 94.Nm chown 95command is expected to be POSIX 1003.2 compliant. 96