chown(1) User Commands chown(1)NAMEchown - change file ownership
SYNOPSIS
/usr/bin/chown
/usr/bin/chown [-fhR] owner[:group] file...
/usr/bin/chown -s [-fhR] ownersid[:groupsid] file...
/usr/bin/chown -R [-f] [-H | -L | -P] owner[:group] file...
/usr/bin/chown -s -R [-f] [-H | -L | -P] ownersid[:groupsid] file...
/usr/xpg4/bin/chown
/usr/xpg4/bin/chown [-fhR] owner[:group] file...
/usr/xpg4/bin/chown -s [-fhR] ownersid[:groupsid] file...
/usr/xpg4/bin/chown -R [-f] [-H | -L | -P] owner[:group] file...
/usr/xpg4/bin/chown -s -R [-f] [-H | -L | -P] ownersid[:groupsid] file...
ksh93
chown [-cflhmnvHLPRX] [-r file] owner[:group] file...
DESCRIPTION
/usr/bin/chown and /usr/xpg4/bin/chown
The chown utility sets the user ID of the file named by each file to
the user ID specified by owner, and, optionally, sets the group ID to
that specified by group.
If chown is invoked by other than the super-user, the set-user-ID bit
is cleared.
Only the owner of a file (or the super-user) can change the owner of
that file.
The operating system has a configuration option
{_POSIX_CHOWN_RESTRICTED}, to restrict ownership changes. When this
option is in effect the owner of the file is prevented from changing
the owner ID of the file. Only the super-user can arbitrarily change
owner IDs whether or not this option is in effect. To set this configu‐
ration option, include the following line in /etc/system:
set rstchown = 1
To disable this option, include the following line in /etc/system:
set rstchown = 0
{_POSIX_CHOWN_RESTRICTED} is enabled by default. See system(4) and
fpathconf(2).
ksh93
The chown built-in in ksh93 is associated with the /bin and /usr/bin
paths. It is invoked when chown is executed without a pathname prefix
and the pathname search finds a /bin/chown or /usr/bin/chown exe‐
cutable.
chown changes the ownership of each file to owner. owner can be speci‐
fied as either a user name or a numeric user id. The group ownership of
each file can also be changed to group by appending :group to the user
name.
OPTIONS
/usr/bin/chown and /usr/xpg4/bin/chown
The following options are supported:
-f Force. Does not report errors.
-h If the file is a symbolic link, this option changes the owner of
the symbolic link. Without this option, the owner of the file
referenced by the symbolic link is changed.
-H If the file specified on the command line is a symbolic link ref‐
erencing a file of type directory, this option changes the owner
of the directory referenced by the symbolic link and all the
files in the file hierarchy below it. If a symbolic link is
encountered when traversing a file hierarchy, the owner of the
target file is changed, but no recursion takes place.
-L If the file is a symbolic link, this option changes the owner of
the file referenced by the symbolic link. If the file specified
on the command line, or encountered during the traversal of the
file hierarchy, is a symbolic link referencing a file of type
directory, then this option changes the owner of the directory
referenced by the symbolic link and all files in the file hierar‐
chy below it.
-P If the file specified on the command line or encountered during
the traversal of a file hierarchy is a symbolic link, this option
changes the owner of the symbolic link. This option does not fol‐
low the symbolic link to any other part of the file hierarchy.
-s The owner and/or group arguments are Windows SID strings. This
option requires a file system that supports storing SIDs, such as
ZFS.
Specifying more than one of the mutually-exclusive options -H, -L, or
-P is not considered an error. The last option specified determines the
behavior of chown.
/usr/bin/chown
The following options are supported:
-R Recursive. chown descends through the directory, and any subdi‐
rectories, setting the specified ownership ID as it proceeds.
When a symbolic link is encountered, the owner of the target file
is changed, unless the -h or -P option is specified. However, no
recursion takes place, unless the -H or -L option is specified.
/usr/xpg4/bin/chown
The following options are supported:
-R Recursive. chown descends through the directory, and any subdi‐
rectories, setting the specified ownership ID as it proceeds.
When a symbolic link is encountered, the owner of the target file
is changed, unless the -h or -P option is specified. Unless the
-H, -L, or -P option is specified, the -L option is used as the
default mode.
ksh93
The following options are supported by the ksh93 built-in chown com‐
mand:
-c
--changes
Describe only files whose ownership actually changes.
-f
--quiet | silent
Do not report files whose ownership fails to change.
-l | h
--symlink
Change the ownership of the symbolic links on systems that support
this option.
-m
--map
Interpret the first operand as a file that contains a map of:
from_uid:from_gid to_uid:to_gid
pairs. Ownership of files matching the from part of any pair is
changed to the corresponding to part of the pair. The process stops
at the first match for each file. Unmatched files are silently
ignored.
-n
--show
Show actions but do not execute.
-r
--reference=file
Omit the explicit ownership operand and use the ownership of the
file instead.
-v
--verbose
Describe the changed permissions of all files.
-H
--metaphysical
Follow symbolic links for command arguments. Otherwise do not fol‐
low symbolic links when traversing directories.
-L
--logical | follow
Follow symbolic links when traversing directories.
-P
--physical | nofollow
Do not follow symbolic links when traversing directories.
-R
--recursive
Recursively change ownership of directories and their contents.
-X
--test
Canonicalize output for testing.
OPERANDS
The following operands are supported:
owner[:group] A user ID and optional group ID to be assigned to
file. The owner portion of this operand must be a user
name from the user database or a numeric user ID.
Either specifies a user ID to be given to each file
named by file. If a numeric owner exists in the user
database as a user name, the user ID number associated
with that user name is used as the user ID. Similarly,
if the group portion of this operand is present, it
must be a group name from the group database or a
numeric group ID. Either specifies a group ID to be
given to each file. If a numeric group operand exists
in the group database as a group name, the group ID
number associated with that group name is used as the
group ID.
file A path name of a file whose user ID is to be modified.
USAGE
See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of chown when
encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2^31 bytes).
EXAMPLES
Example 1 Changing Ownership of All Files in the Hierarchy
The following command changes ownership of all files in the hierarchy,
including symbolic links, but not the targets of the links:
example% chown −R −h owner[:group] file...
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables
that affect the execution of chown: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LC_MES‐
SAGES, and NLSPATH.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0 The utility executed successfully and all requested changes were
made.
>0 An error occurred.
FILES
/etc/passwd System password file
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
/usr/bin/chown
┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Availability │SUNWcs │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│CSI │Enabled. See NOTES. │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Interface Stability │Committed │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Standard │See standards(5). │
└─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
/usr/xpg4/bin/chown
┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Availability │SUNWxcu4 │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│CSI │Enabled. See NOTES. │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Interface Stability │Committed │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Standard │See standards(5). │
└─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
ksh93
┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Availability │SUNWcsu │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Interface Stability │See below. │
└─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
The ksh93 built-in binding to /bin and /usr/bin is Volatile. The built-
in interfaces are Uncommitted.
SEE ALSOchgrp(1), chmod(1),ksh93(1), chown(2), fpathconf(2), passwd(4), sys‐
tem(4), attributes(5), environ(5), largefile(5), standards(5)NOTESchown is CSI-enabled except for the owner and group names.
SunOS 5.11 11 Jul 2008 chown(1)