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

The command chown /ˈtʃoʊn/, an abbreviation of change owner, is used on Unix and Unix-like operating systems to change the owner of file system files and directories. Unprivileged (regular) users who wish to change the group membership of a file that they own may use chgrp.

The ownership of any file in the system may only be altered by a super-user. A user cannot give away ownership of a file, even when the user owns it. Similarly, only a member of a group can change a file's group ID to that group.^[1]

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

The command is available as a separate package for Microsoft Windows as part of the UnxUtils collection of native Win32 ports of common GNU Unix-like utilities.^[3] The chown command has also been ported to the IBM i operating system.^[4]

• chgrp
• chmod
• takeown

The Wikibook Guide to Unix has a page on the topic of: Commands

• 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)