CHCON(1) User Commands CHCON(1) NAME chcon - change file security context SYNOPSIS chcon [OPTION]... CONTEXT FILE... chcon [OPTION]... [-u USER] [-r ROLE] [-l RANGE] [-t TYPE] FILE... chcon [OPTION]... --reference=RFILE FILE... DESCRIPTION Change the SELinux security context of each FILE to CONTEXT. With --reference, change the security context of each FILE to that of RFILE. Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too. --dereference affect the referent of each symbolic link (this is the default), rather than the symbolic link itself -h, --no-dereference affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file -u, --user=USER set user USER in the target security context -r, --role=ROLE set role ROLE in the target security context -t, --type=TYPE set type TYPE in the target security context -l, --range=RANGE set range RANGE in the target security context --no-preserve-root do not treat '/' specially (the default) --preserve-root fail to operate recursively on '/' --reference=RFILE use RFILE's security context rather than specifying a CONTEXT value -R, --recursive operate on files and directories recursively -v, --verbose output a diagnostic for every file processed The following options modify how a hierarchy is traversed when the -R option is also specified. If more than one is specified, only the final one takes effect. -H if a command line argument is a symbolic link to a directory, traverse it -L traverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered -P do not traverse any symbolic links (default) --help display this help and exit --version output version information and exit AUTHOR Written by Russell Coker and Jim Meyering. REPORTING BUGS GNU coreutils online help: Report chcon translation bugs to COPYRIGHT Copyright © 2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later . This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. SEE ALSO Full documentation at: or available locally via: info '(coreutils) chcon invocation' GNU coreutils 8.23 March 2015 CHCON(1)