.\" DO NOT MODIFY THIS FILE!  It was generated by help2man 1.49.3.
.TH CHOWN "1" "January 2023" "GNU coreutils 9.1" "User Commands"
.SH NAME
chown \- manual page for chown 9.1
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B chown
[\fI\,OPTION\/\fR]... [\fI\,OWNER\/\fR][\fI\,:\/\fR[\fI\,GROUP\/\fR]] \fI\,FILE\/\fR...
.br
.B chown
[\fI\,OPTION\/\fR]... \fI\,--reference=RFILE FILE\/\fR...
.SH DESCRIPTION
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\-f\fR, \fB\-\-silent\fR, \fB\-\-quiet\fR
suppress most error messages
.TP
\fB\-v\fR, \fB\-\-verbose\fR
output a diagnostic for every file processed
.TP
\fB\-\-dereference\fR
affect the referent of each symbolic link (this is
the default), rather than the symbolic link itself
.TP
\fB\-h\fR, \fB\-\-no\-dereference\fR
affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file
(useful only on systems that can change the
ownership of a symlink)
.TP
\fB\-\-from\fR=\fI\,CURRENT_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
.TP
\fB\-\-no\-preserve\-root\fR
do not treat '/' specially (the default)
.TP
\fB\-\-preserve\-root\fR
fail to operate recursively on '/'
.TP
\fB\-\-reference\fR=\fI\,RFILE\/\fR
use RFILE's owner and group rather than
specifying OWNER:GROUP values
.TP
\fB\-R\fR, \fB\-\-recursive\fR
operate on files and directories recursively
.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 ':' following a symbolic OWNER.
OWNER and GROUP may be numeric as well as symbolic.
.SH EXAMPLES
.TP
chown root /u
Change the owner of /u to "root".
.TP
chown root:staff /u
Likewise, but also change its group to "staff".
.TP
chown \-hR root /u
Change the owner of /u and subfiles to "root".
.PP
GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>
Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/chown>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) chown invocation'
.SH AUTHOR
Written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.
.SH COPYRIGHT
Copyright \(co 2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
.br
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.