What is chgrp?
5 chgrp examples
Syntax and Options
Related Commands
What is chgrp?
5 chgrp Examples
1. To change the group name of a file or directory
You can change the group of a file as shown below,
$ ls -l -rw-r--r-- 1 john john 210 2011-01-04 16:01 /home/john/sample.txt $ chgrp user /home/john/sample.txt $ ls -l -rw-r--r-- 1 john user 210 2011-01-04 16:01 /home/john/sample.txt
2. To change the group name of link files
Using –derefence option, the group of referent of symbolic link file can be changed and with –no-dereference option, the group of symbolic link file can be changed as shown below.
# the group name of actual file pointed by sym_link gets changed. $ chgrp --dereference guest sym_link # the group name of sym_link gets changed. $ chgrp --no-dereference user sym_link $ ls -l sym_link richard_readme.txt lrw-r--r-- 1 bala user 4 2011-01-04 15:52 sym_link -> readme.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 bala guest 20 2011-01-04 15:52 readme.txt
Note : –dereference is the default option.
3. To change the group for list of files
Using -R option, the list of file’s group name can be modified as shown below,
$ chgrp -R guest dir/ $ ls -l dir/ total 8 -rw-r--r-- 1 bala guest 20 2011-01-04 16:50 readme.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 bala guest 20 2011-01-04 16:50 changes.txt
4. To use the group value of another file instead of specifying explicitly
By using –reference=RFILE option, the group value of RFILE’s gets used instead of specifying the value explicitly.
$ ls -l /home/bala/sample.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 bala guest 20 2011-01-04 16:50 /home/bala/query.txt $ ls -l query.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 steven user 20 2011-01-04 16:50 query.txt $ chgrp --reference=/home/bala/query.txt query.txt $ ls -l query.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 steven guest 20 2011-01-04 16:50 query.txt
5. To print the verbose messages only when changes made
The -c option makes the verbose messages gets printed only when the changed is made in FILE.
$ chgrp -c user sample.txt changed group of `sample.txt' to user
Syntax and Options
chgrp [OPTIONS]… GROUP FILE…
| Short Option | Long Option | Option Description |
|---|---|---|
| -c | –changes | to print verbose only when changes made |
| –dereference | to change the group name of referent of symbolic link rather than symbolic link itself | |
| -h | –no-dereference | to change the group name of symbolic link itself |
| –no-preserve-root | do not treat ‘/’ specially ( default ) | |
| –preserve-root | fail to operate recursively on ‘/’ | |
| -f | –silent, –quiet | to suppress most of the error messages |
| –reference=RFLIE | to use RFILE’s group name instead of specifying it explicitly | |
| -R | –recursive | to operate on files and directories recursively |
| -v | –verbose | to output a diagnostic for every file processed |