11/26/2014

chownWikipedia,thefreeencyclopedia

chown
FromWikipedia,thefreeencyclopedia

Thechowncommand(abbreviationforchangeowner)isusedonUnixlikesystemstochangetheownerof
afile.Unprivileged(regular)userswhowishtochangethegroupofafilethattheyownmayusechgrp.
FromtheBSDmanpageforchown:
Forobvioussecurityreasons,theownershipofafilemayonlybealteredbyasuperuser.
Similarly,onlyamemberofagroupcanchangeafile'sgroupIDtothatgroup.[1]

Usageexamples
Theseexamplesillustratetypicalsyntaxanduse.Modifyingpermissionsrequiresyouareeitherrootor
havewriteaccesstothefile.Changingownerrequiresrootprivilege.
Changetheownerof/var/run/httpd.pidto'root'(thestandardnamefortheSuperuser).

$chownroot/var/run/httpd.pid

Changetheownerofstrace.logto'rob'andthegroupidentifierto'developers'.

$chownrob:developersstrace.log

Changetheownerof/tmpand/var/tmptonobody(notagoodidea),andchangethegroupof/tmp
and/var/tmptonogroup

$chownnobody:nogroup/tmp/var/tmp

Changethegroupidentifierof/hometo512(regardlessofwhetheragroupnameisassociatedwith
theidentifier512ornot).

$chown:512/home

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chown

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11/26/2014

chownWikipedia,thefreeencyclopedia

Changetheownershipofbasetotheuserfoouserandmakeitrecursive(R)

$chownRfoouserbase

Changetheownershiptonewuserandgrouptonewgroupforallofthefilesanddirectoriesincurrent
directory,andallsubdirectories(recursively).

$chownRnewuser:newgroup.

Seealso
chgrp
chmod
takeown

Externallinks
chown(http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/chown.html)Commands&

UtilitiesReference,TheSingleUNIXSpecification,Issue7fromTheOpenGroup
chownmanualpage(http://nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu/~dicke3/nerspcs/chown.html)
ThechownCommand(http://www.linfo.org/chown.html)byTheLinuxInformationProject(LINFO)
1. ^BSDManpageforchown,March31,1994
(https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/chown.8.html)

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