CHOWN(1)

📦
version 9.12 · 24 versions
, in arch rolling

👑 CHOWN(1) — the manual page, bestie edition

okay so welcome to chown, a User Commands classic ✨ this is the GNU one, and she's iconic. buckle up 🎀

🌸 NAME 🌸

chown — change file owner and group 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

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

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so this page is documenting the GNU version of chown, just so we're clear 🫶 and what does she do? she changes the user and/or group ownership of each file you hand her. that's the whole job. main character energy fr.

here's the tea on how the ownership part works 🍓:

  • if you give her only an owner (either a user name or a numeric user ID), that user becomes the owner of each given file — and the files' group is not changed. leave the group alone, she said.
  • if the owner is followed by a colon and a group name (or a numeric group ID), with no spaces between them, then the group ownership of the files gets changed too. two birds, one slay 💅
  • if you give a colon but no group name after the user name, that user becomes the owner and the group gets changed to that user's login group. cute.
  • if you give the colon and group but omit the owner, only the group changes — in that case chown does exactly the same thing as chgrp. same vibe, different name 😌
  • and if you give only a colon, or the entire operand is empty, then neither the owner nor the group is changed. nothing happens. the void. 💀

💖 OPTIONS 💖

change the owner and/or group of each FILE to OWNER and/or GROUP. with --reference, change the owner and group of each FILE to those of RFILE.

  • -c, --changes — like verbose, but she only reports when a change is actually made 📢
  • -f, --silent, --quiet — suppress most error messages 🤫
  • -v, --verbose — output a diagnostic for every single file processed. every. one. 👀
  • --dereference — affect the referent of each symbolic link rather than the symbolic link itself — and bestie, this is the default ✨
  • -h, --no-dereference — affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file; only useful on systems that can actually change the ownership of a symlink 🪄
  • --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP — only change the ownership of each file if its current owner and/or group match what you put here. either one may be omitted, and if it's omitted then a match isn't required for that omitted attribute 👑
  • --no-preserve-root — do not treat / specially (this is the default)
  • --preserve-root — fail to operate recursively on / 🚫
  • --reference=RFILE — use RFILE's ownership instead of specifying values yourself. RFILE is always dereferenced if it's a symbolic link 🔗
  • -R, --recursive — operate on files and directories recursively, down the whole tree 🌳

the following options modify how a hierarchy is traversed when the -R option is also specified. if more than one is specified, only the final one takes effect. -P is the default.

  • -H — if a command line argument is a symlink to a directory, traverse it
  • -L — traverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered
  • -P — do not traverse any symbolic links
  • --help — display this help and exit 🫶
  • --version — output version information and exit

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 🧚

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

chown root /u        Change the owner of /u to "root".
chown root:staff /u  Likewise, but also change its group to "staff".
chown -hR root /u    Change the owner of /u and subfiles to "root".

🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering. legends, honestly 👑

🙈 REPORTING BUGS 🙈

Copyright © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.

this is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. there is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. no cap, that's literally what it says 😭

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/chown>

or available locally via: info '(coreutils) chown invocation'

okay that's the whole page bestie, go forth and change some ownership 💅✨

this was GNU coreutils 9.12, dated September 2026 — thanks for reading, ily, mwah 🫶🎀
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