Chown

For the surname, see Chown (surname).

chown

Example usage of chown command
Original author(s)	Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie
Developer(s)	AT&T Bell Laboratories
Initial release	November 3, 1971;53 years ago (1971-11-03)
Operating system	Unix and Unix-like, IBM i
Platform	Cross-platform
Type	Command

chown /ˈtʃoʊn/ , short for change owner, is a shell command for changing the owning user of Unix-based file system files – including special files such as directories.

The ownership of a file may only be altered by a super-user (such as via sudo ). A regular user cannot give away their ownership of a file. ^[1]

The version of chown bundled in GNU coreutils was written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering. ^[2]

The command is available for Windows via UnxUtils. ^[3] The command was ported to IBM i. ^[4]

See also

• chgrp  – Shell command for changing the group of a file
• chmod  – Shell command for changing access permissions of a file
• List of POSIX commands
• takeown

References

1. BSD Man page for chown, March 31, 1994
2. chown(1)  –  Linux User Manual – User Commands
3. "Native Win32 ports of some GNU utilities". unxutils.sourceforge.net.
4. IBM. "IBM System i Version 7.2 Programming Qshell" (PDF). IBM . Archived (PDF) from the original on 2020-09-18. Retrieved 2020-09-05.

External links

• chown  – Shell and Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX Specification , Version 4 from The Open Group
• chown manual page
• The chown Command by The Linux Information Project (LINFO)