chown(1) MPE/iX Shell and Utilities chown(1)
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NAME
chown -- change the ownership of files and/or directories
SYNOPSIS
chown [-fR] owner [:group] pathname ...
DESCRIPTION
chown sets the user ID to owner for the files and directories
named by pathname arguments. owner can be a user name from the
user database the user database, or a numeric user ID.
If you include a group name (specify the owner followed immedi-
ately by a colon (:) and group with no intervening spaces, such
as owner:group) then chown also sets the group ID to group for
the files and directories named.
Options
chown accepts the following options:
-f does not issue an error message if chown cannot change the
owner. In this case, chown always returns a status of zero.
-R If a pathname on the command line is the name of a direc-
tory, chown changes all the files and subdirectories under
that directory to belong to the specified owner (and group,
if :group is specified). If chown cannot change some file
or subdirectory under the directory, it continues to try to
change the other files and subdirectories under the direc-
tory, but exits with a non-zero status.
DIAGNOSTICS
Possible exit status values are:
0 You specified -f, or chown successfully changed the ownership
of all the specified files and directories.
1 Failure due to any of the following:
-- unable to access a specified file
-- unable to change the owner of a specified file
-- unable to read the directory containing the directory entry of the file
-- encountered a fatal error when using the -R option
2 Failure due to any of the following:
-- the command line contained an invalid option
-- the command line had too few arguments
-- specified an owner with a userid that the system did not recognize
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chown(1) MPE/iX Shell and Utilities chown(1)
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Messages
Message: fatal error during "-R" option
Cause: You specified the -R option but some file or directory
in the directory structure was inaccessible.
Action: Check all files in the directory structure to make sure
that you have access to them.
Message: file "filename": system error
Cause: See syserror(3).
Action: See syserror(3).
Message: group "group" is unknown
Cause: You specified a group name that chown was unable to
find in the group database.
Action: Specify a valid group name or use a valid numeric group
ID.
Message: read directory "pathname": system error
Cause: See syserror(3).
Action: See syserror(3).
Message: stat file "filename": system error
Cause: See syserror(3).
Action: See syserror(3).
Message: Unknown option "-option"
Cause: You specified an option that is not valid for chown.
Action: Check the Options section of this man page for a list
of valid options.
Message: user "user" is unknown
Cause: You specified a user name that chown was unable to find
in the user database.
Action: Specify a valid group name or use a valid numeric group
ID.
PORTABILITY
POSIX.2. x/OPEN Portability Guide 4.0. All UNIX systems.
The -f option is an extension to the POSIX standard.
MPE/iX NOTES
The current MPE/iX implementation of chown does not allow you to
modify the ownership of the root directory, account directories,
and group directories.
On MPE/iX, chown is available as both a built-in shell utility
and an external utility.
For more information on how the current MPE/iX implementation may
affect the operation of this utility, see Appendix A, MPE/iX
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chown(1) MPE/iX Shell and Utilities chown(1)
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Implementation Considerations.
SEE ALSO
chgrp(1), chmod(1)
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