The chown command (abbreviation for change owner) is used on Unix-like systems to change the owner of a file. Unprivileged (regular) users who wish to change the group of a file that they own may use chgrp. From the BSD man page for chown: For obvious security reasons, the ownership of a file may only be altered by a super-user. Similarly, only a ... Found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chown