CHOWN(1)

📦 version 0.12.0, in arch rolling

🌸 NAME 🌸

okay bestie, welcome to CHOWN(1) from the General Commands Manual — it's giving file-ownership main character energy 💅

chown — Change file owner and group

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

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

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Change file owner and group.

like, that's literally the whole description. short. iconic. no notes. 👑

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • --help — Print help information.
  • -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. Either may be omitted, in which case a match is not required for the omitted attribute
  • --preserve-root — fail to operate recursively on /
  • --no-preserve-root — do not treat / specially (the default)
  • --quiet — suppress most error messages
  • -R, --recursive — operate on files and directories recursively
  • --reference <RFILE> — use RFILE's owner and group rather than specifying OWNER:GROUP values
  • -f, --silent — no extra description given in the original, bestie, it just sits there looking mysterious 🫶
  • -v, --verbose — output a diagnostic for every file processed
  • -H — if a command line argument is a symbolic link to a directory, traverse it
  • -L — traverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered
  • -P — do not traverse any symbolic links (default)
  • --dereference — affect the referent of each symbolic link (this is the default), rather than the symbolic link itself
  • -h, --no-dereference — affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file (useful only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink)
  • -V, --version — Print version
okay but fr fr, keep an eye on those recursive flags — --preserve-root is the one that says "nope, not on /" and --no-preserve-root is the default that says "we do not treat / specially." no cap, that's the vibe. 💀

👑 VERSION 👑

v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0

that's the whole page, bestie 💖 — source/version: v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0, date: 2026-09-17. mwah 🫶✨

📦 where this page comes from