chown

For the surname, see Chown (surname).

The chown command (abbreviation for change owner) is used on Unix-like systems to change the owner of a file. In most implementations, it can only be executed by the superuser. Unprivileged (regular) users who wish to change the group of a file that they own may use chgrp.

Usage examples

These examples illustrate typical syntax and use. Because chown modifies permissions, it usually requires root privilege to run.

 # chown root /var/run/httpd.pid

• Change the owner of /var/run/httpd.pid to 'root' (the standard name for the Superuser).

 # chown rob:developers strace.log

• Change the owner of strace.log to 'rob' and the group identifier to 'developers'.

 # chown nobody:nogroup /tmp /var/tmp

• Change the owner of /tmp and /var/tmp to ‘nobody’ (not a good idea)
• Change the group of /tmp and /var/tmp to ‘nogroup’

 # chown :512 /home

• Change the group identifier of /home to 512 (regardless of whether a group name is associated with the identifier 512 or not).

 # chown -R us base

• Change the ownership of base to the user us and make it recursive (-R)

 # chown -R newuser:newgroup .

• Change the ownership to newuser and group to newgroup for all of the files and directories in current directory, and all subdirectories (recursively).

See also

• chmod
• chgrp
• takeown

External links

• chown – Commands & Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX® Specification, Issue 7 from The Open Group
• chown manual page
• The chown Command by The Linux Information Project (LINFO)