chown

What it does

How to write it

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

Main parts

USER

Only the owner changes.

USER:GROUP

Owner and group change.

:GROUP

Only the group changes (same as chgrp).

USER:

Owner changes; group becomes the login group of USER.

Most used

Nothing matches this filter.

$ run as a normal user# run as root (or with sudo)

1. 1Give a file to a user

   #chown lisa report.txt

   Only root can do this.

2. 2Set owner and group

   #chown lisa:sales report.txt

   Both in one step.

3. 3Change only the group

   #chown :sales report.txt

   Same as chgrp sales report.txt.

4. 4Give a web app to the web server user

   #chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/app/uploads

   Only the upload folder; the code itself should stay owned by root (hardening).

5. 5Show only what changed

   #chown -Rc lisa:lisa /home/lisa
   changed ownership of '/home/lisa/old.txt' from root:root to lisa:lisa

   Good after you copied files as root into a home folder.

6. 6Change only files of an old user

   #chown -R --from=olduser newuser /srv/project

   Files of other owners stay as they are.

7. 7Use numbers for files from another server

   #chown -R 1500:3000 /srv/restore

   Works even when the names do not exist here.

8. 8Copy the owner of another file

   #chown --reference=/var/www/html/index.html /var/www/html/new.html

   Same owner and group as the reference.

9. 9Change a symbolic link itself

   #chown -h lisa /home/lisa/link-to-data

   Without -h the target file changes.

10. 10Fix files after a UID change

    #find / -xdev -uid 1500 -exec chown -h sam {} +

    All files of the old UID go to sam.

11. 11Protect against a typo on /

    #chown -R --preserve-root lisa /
    chown: it is dangerous to operate recursively on '/'

    Use it in scripts with variables.

Nothing matches this filter.

Exit codes