www.LinuxHowtos.org howtos, tips&tricks and tutorials for linux

from small one page howto to huge articles all in one place

Other .linuxhowtos.org sites:gentoo.linuxhowtos.org

Last additions:

using iotop to find disk usage hogs

words:

887

views:

209583

userrating:

May 25th. 2007:

Words

486

Views

258591

why adblockers are bad

Workaround and fixes for the current Core Dump Handling vulnerability affected kernels

words:

161

views:

149881

userrating:

April, 26th. 2006:

Words

Views

107373

New subdomain: toolsntoys.linuxhowtos.org

You are here: manpages

CHOWN

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: February 2026
Index Return to Main Contents

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.

X'tty: link https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chow-c'-c, --changesX'tty: link': like verbose but report only when a change is made
X'tty: link https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chow-f'-f, --silent, --quietX'tty: link': suppress most error messages
X'tty: link https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chow-v'-v, --verboseX'tty: link': output a diagnostic for every file processed
X'tty: link https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chow-dereference'--dereferenceX'tty: link': affect the referent of each symbolic link (this is the default), rather than the symbolic link itself
X'tty: link https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chow-h'-h, --no-dereferenceX'tty: link': affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file; useful only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink
X'tty: link https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chow-from'--from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUPX'tty: link': change the ownership 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
X'tty: link https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chow-n-preserv-root'--no-preserve-rootX'tty: link': do not treat '/' specially (the default)
X'tty: link https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chow-preserv-root'--preserve-rootX'tty: link': fail to operate recursively on '/'
X'tty: link https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chow-reference'--reference=RFILEX'tty: link': use RFILE's ownership rather than specifying values. RFILE is always dereferenced if a symbolic link.
X'tty: link https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chow-R'-R, --recursiveX'tty: link': 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. -P is the default.

X'tty: link https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chow-H'-HX'tty: link': if a command line argument is a symlink to a directory, traverse it
X'tty: link https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chow-L'-LX'tty: link': traverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered
X'tty: link https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chow-P'-PX'tty: link': do not traverse any symbolic links
X'tty: link https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/chown#chow-help'--helpX'tty: link': display this help and exit
X'tty: link https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/chown#chow-version'--versionX'tty: link': 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.