chown

chown
chown
	Example usage of chown command
Original authors	Ken Thompson,; Dennis Ritchie
Developer	AT&T Bell Laboratories
Release	November 3, 1971; 54 years ago
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]

References

↑ "BSD Man page for chown, March 31, 1994". Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved September 10, 2013.
↑ chown(1) – Linux User Manual – User Commands from Manned.org
↑ "Native Win32 ports of some GNU utilities". unxutils.sourceforge.net. Archived from the original on 2006-02-09. Retrieved 2025-08-09.
↑ IBM. "IBM System i Version 7.2 Programming Qshell" (PDF). IBM. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2020-09-18. Retrieved 2020-09-05.

chown – Shell and Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 5 from The Open Group
chown manual page
The chown Command by The Linux Information Project (LINFO)

v t e Unix command-line utilities and shell builtins
File system	cat chattr chmod chown chgrp cksum cmp cp dd du df file fuser ln ls mkdir mv pax pwd rm rmdir split tee touch type umask
Processes	at bg crontab fg kill nice ps time
User environment	env exit logname mesg talk tput uname who write
Text processing	awk basename comm csplit cut diff dirname ed ex fold head iconv join m4 more nl paste patch printf read sed sort strings tail tr troff uniq vi wc xargs
Shell builtins	alias cd echo test unset wait
Searching	find grep
Documentation	man
Software development	ar ctags lex make nm strip yacc
Miscellaneous	bc cal dc expr lp od sleep true and false
Categories Standard Unix programs Unix SUS2008 utilities List

v t e GNU Core Utilities command-line interface programs
File system	chcon chmod chown chgrp cksum cp dd df dir dircolors install ln ls mkdir mkfifo mknod mktemp mv realpath rm rmdir shred sync touch truncate vdir
Text utilities	b2sum base32 base64 cat cksum comm csplit cut expand fmt fold head join md5sum nl numfmt od paste ptx pr sha1sum shuf sort split sum tac tail tr tsort unexpand uniq wc
Shell utilities	arch basename chroot date dirname du echo env expr factor false groups hostid id link logname nice nohup nproc pathchk pinky printenv printf pwd readlink runcon seq sleep stat stdbuf stty tee test timeout true tty uname unlink uptime users who whoami yes