CHOWN(1B)

✨ CHOWN(1B) ✨

Hey bestie, welcome to the CHOWN(1B) glow-up 💅✨ — yes, it's the BSD System Compatibility version, and yes, we're gonna get into it.

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🌸 NAME 🌸

chown — (BSD) change file ownwer 😭 (ok so the original literally spells it "ownwer" and I'm not fixing it because DETAILS, but just know it's giving "owner" energy, fr fr)

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

/ucb/chown [-fhHLPR] owner[.group] file ...

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Okay so picture this: chown changes the owner of the files to owner, and if group is also there? It changes the group-ID of the files to group. Slay. 🫶

And here's the tea: both owner and group can be either a decimal UID / GID or a login / group name that's found in the password file. iykyk.

The following options are accepted:

• -f — bestie said "no negativity" — do not display errors 🙈
• -h — when a symbolic link is encountered, change the owner and group of the link itself, not the file it refers to. main character energy, focusing on the link not the destination 💅
• -R — recursively descend into each file operand. Whether owner and group of a symbolic link are changed depends on the -h option, but the link is not followed otherwise. it's giving "respect the link's boundaries" ✨

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🌈 The POSIX.1-2001 options (yes they're iconic, no we're not skipping them) 🌈

• -H — with the -R option, if a symbolic link given on the command line points to a directory, follow that symbolic link and change owner and group in the files below, but do not handle any other symbolic links specially. so like, only the command-line link gets the special treatment, periodt. 👑
• -L — with the -R option, whenever a symbolic link is encountered that points to a directory, follow the symbolic link and change owner and group in the files below. it's giving "follow every directory link you see" energy 🔥
• -P — with the -R option, do not follow any symbolic links, but change owner and group of the links themselves. no chasing, just respecting the link as-is, ngl that's valid 🦋

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🍓 FILES 🍓

• /etc/passwd
• /etc/group

these are the files, bestie — the sources of truth for all your user and group name needs 💜

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

chown(2), passwd(5), group(5)

go read those if you wanna go deeper, iykyk 🌸

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💀 NOTES 💀

Okay so permission to change owner and group? It's based on either:

• historical System V behaviour — which is to allow the owner of the file or a privileged user to change to any value (wild, I know 😭), or
• historical BSD behaviour — which is to restrict changing the owner to a privileged user and changing the group to a group to which the file owner belongs (more chill, more rules, still iconic)

so yeah, it depends on the vibe of your system, fr fr. 🙈

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💅 That's the whole page, bestie. No cap, every option, file, and note is here. Go change some owners and slay. ✨

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This page is brought to you by the Heirloom Toolchest, dated 1/29/05 — vintage but still iconic 🎀💖