chown

chown [options ] newowner [: newgroup ] files

Change the ownership of one or more files to newowner . newowner is either a user ID number or a login name located in /etc/passwd . The optional newgroup is either a group ID number (GID) or a group name located in the /etc/group file. When newgroup is supplied, the behavior is to change the ownership of one or more files to newowner and make it belong to newgroup .

Note: some systems accept a period as well as the colon for separating newowner and newgroup . The colon is mandated by POSIX; the period is accepted for compatibility with older BSD systems.

Options

-f

Force error messages to be suppressed.

-h

Change the owner on symbolic links. Normally, chown acts on the file referenced by a symbolic link, not on the link itself. (This option is not necessarily available on all Unix systems.)

-R

Recursively descend through the directory, including subdirectories and symbolic links, resetting the ownership ID.