z/OS V1R9.0 UNIX System Services Command ... - Christian Grothoff

Exit Values
0 Successful completion
Related Information
mount, unmount
chown — Change the owner or group of a file or directory
Format
Description
Options
chown [–fhR] owner[:group] pathname ...
chmount
chown sets the user ID (UID) to owner for the files and directories named by
pathname arguments. owner can be a user name from the user data base, or it can
be a numeric user ID. (If a numeric owner exists as a user name in the user data
base, the user ID number associated with that user name is used.) If there is no
change to the UID, then specify – – –1.
If you include a group name (that is, if you specify owner followed immediately by a
colon (:) and then group with no intervening spaces, such as owner:group) chown
also sets the group ID (GID) to group for the files and directories named. group can
be a group name from the security facility group data base, or it can be a numeric
group ID. If a numeric group exists as a group name in the group data base, the
group ID number associated with that group is used. If there is no change to the
GID, then specify –1 (or do not specify the :group).
Note: Only a superuser can change the UID. To change the GID, you must either
be a superuser, or the effective user ID of the process must be equal to the
user ID of the file owner, and the owner argument is also equal to the user
ID of the file owner or –1, and the group argument is the calling process’s
effective group ID or one of its supplementary group IDs.
chown also turns off the set-user-ID bit and set-group -ID bit of the named files and
directories.
–f Does not issue an error message if chown cannot change the owner. In
this case, chown always returns a status of zero. Other errors may cause a
nonzero return status.
–h Does not attempt to follow the symbolic link (or external link), but instead
makes the changes on the symbolic link (or external link) itself.
–R If pathname on the command line is the name of a directory, chown
changes all the files and subdirectories in that directory to belong to the
specified owner (and group, if :group is specified).
If a symbolic link is specified or encountered during the traversal of a file
hierarchy, chown changes the directory referenced by the symbolic link and
all files in the file hierarchy below it.
If chown cannot change some file or subdirectory in the directory, it
continues to try to change the other files and subdirectories in the directory,
but exits with a nonzero status.
Chapter 2. Shell command descriptions 129