chown(1)

💖 chown — bestie edition 💖

okay so you found the chown(1) page from the General Commands Manual and you're like "what is this" — don't worry, I got you. this is literally the glow-up tool for file ownership. let's go ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

chown — Change file owner and group

like. that's it. that's the whole vibe. it changes who owns a file and which group it belongs to. main character energy for your filesystem fr fr 👑

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

chown [--help] [-c|--changes] [--from] [--preserve-root]
[--no-preserve-root] [--quiet] [-R|--recursive] [--reference]
[-f|--silent] [-v|--verbose] [-H ] [-L ] [-P ] [--dereference]
[-h|--no-dereference] [-V|--version]

yes bestie, that's a LOT of flags. it's giving "I have options and I'm not afraid to use them" 💅

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Change file owner and group

okay so the whole point: you point chown at some files and tell it who should own them and/or what group they should be in, and it makes that happen. no cap. 🌈

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• --help — Print help information. the "what does this even do" button 🫶
• -c, --changes — like verbose but report only when a change is made. so it's verbose but with a filter — only speaks up when something actually changed. lowkey the polite version 😌
• --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. basically: "only do the thing if it currently looks like this". a little conditional, a little gatekeep-y, we love her 🔥
• --preserve-root — fail to operate recursively on /. it literally refuses to touch the root directory when you're going recursive. protective queen 🛡️
• --no-preserve-root — do not treat / specially (the default). so by default / is fair game when you're going recursive. be careful bestie 😭
• --quiet — suppress most error messages. shhh. no drama. 🙈
• -R, --recursive — operate on files and directories recursively. it goes down the whole tree. every folder, every subfolder, all of it 🧚
• --reference <RFILE> — use RFILE's owner and group rather than specifying OWNER:GROUP values. copy the ownership vibe straight off another file, no typing numbers. iconic 💖
• -f, --silent — (same energy as quiet, bestie — this is the flag, that's the whole entry) 💀
• -v, --verbose — output a diagnostic for every file processed. it tells you about EVERY single file. every one. yapper mode activated 🗣️
• -H — if a command line argument is a symbolic link to a directory, traverse it. so only the symlinks you literally handed it on the command line get followed 🎀
• -L — traverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered. every symlink it bumps into? followed. all of them. no skipping 🌟
• -P — do not traverse any symbolic links (default). chill. no following. this is the default behavior 🦋
• --dereference — affect the referent of each symbolic link (this is the default), rather than the symbolic link itself. you're changing the thing the symlink points at, not the symlink. and yes, this is the default ⭐
• -h, --no-dereference — affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file (useful only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink). careful — this one only does anything on systems that can actually change a symlink's ownership, so on some setups it's just... not a thing 😭
• -V, --version — Print version. the receipts 📜

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👑 VERSION 👑

v(uutils coreutils) 0.7.0

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a lil reminder bestie: --preserve-root vs --no-preserve-root matters a LOT when you're running -R. don't be out here changing ownership of / on accident. that's not the vibe. that's a crisis 💀

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and that's the whole page, you ate that 🍓 mwah 💖 this was chown from uutils coreutils, version 0.7.0 — same energy as the chown(1) you'd find in the General Commands Manual, just with way better vibes. stay slay, stay recursive, and go change some ownership ✨💅🦋