CHOWN(1)                    General Commands Manual                   CHOWN(1)

NAME
       chown - Change file owner and group

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]

DESCRIPTION
       Change file owner and group

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


       -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

VERSION
       v(uutils coreutils) 0.8.0

                                  2026-04-07                          CHOWN(1)