chown changes the owner of the filenames to owner. The owner may be either a decimal user ID (UID) or a login name found in the password file. An optional group may also be specified. The group may be either a decimal group ID (GID) or a group name found in the GID file.

Only the super-user of the machine where the file is physically located can change owner, in order to simplify accounting procedures.

-f

Do not report errors.

-R

Recursively descend into directories setting the ownership of all files in each directory encountered. When symbolic links are encountered, their ownership is changed, but they are not traversed.

/etc/passwd

password file

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

chgrp(1), chown(2), group(4), passwd(4), attributes(5)