HxHippy

chown

Change file owner and group

command File ManagementPermissionsSecurity

Overview

Changes the user and/or group ownership of each given file. The owner and group can be specified as OWNER, :GROUP, or OWNER:GROUP.

Syntax

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

Common Options

-R, --recursive

Operate on files and directories recursively.

-v, --verbose

Output a diagnostic for every file processed.

-c, --changes

Like verbose but report only when a change is made.

--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.

--reference=RFILE

Use RFILE's owner and group rather than specifying OWNER:GROUP values.

-h, --no-dereference

Affect symbolic links themselves instead of the files they point to (useful only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink).

--silent, --quiet

Suppress most error messages.

Examples

$ sudo chown newuser myfile.txt

Changes the owner of myfile.txt to newuser.

$ sudo chown :newgroup important_dir

Changes the group ownership of important_dir to newgroup.

$ sudo chown user1:group1 report.doc

Changes both the owner to user1 and group to group1 for report.doc.

$ sudo chown -R dave /home/dave/public_html

Recursively changes ownership of all files and directories in /home/dave/public_html to user dave.

$ sudo chown -c --from=olduser:oldgroup newuser:newgroup somefile

Changes ownership of somefile to newuser:newgroup only if it was previously owned by olduser:oldgroup, and reports the change.

$ sudo chown --reference=/etc/passwd /etc/shadow

Makes /etc/shadow have the same owner and group as /etc/passwd.

Related Commands

ls

List directory contents

cp

Copy files and directories

mv

Move or rename files and directories

rm

Remove files or directories

rmdir

Remove empty directories

touch

Change file timestamps or create empty files

ownergrouppermissionsfiledirectorysecuritychange ownerchown