Changing a Group's Owner or Name
| Chapter 5. Using Groups |

## Changing a Group's Owner or Name

To change a group's owner, use the pts chown command. To change its name, use the pts rename command.

You can change the owner or name of a group that you own (either directly or because you belong to the owning group). You can assign group ownership to another user, another group, or the group itself. If you are not already a member of the group and need to be, use the pts adduser command before transferring ownership, following the instructions in To Add Members to a Group.

The pts chown command automatically changes a group's `owner_name` prefix to indicate the new owner. If the new owner is a group, only its `owner_name` prefix is used, not its entire name. However, the change in `owner_name` prefix command does not propagate to any groups owned by the group whose owner is changing. If you want their `owner_name` prefixes to indicate the correct owner, you must use the pts rename command.

Otherwise, you normally use the pts rename command to change only the `group_name` part of a group name (the part that follows the colon). You can change the `owner_name` prefix only to reflect the actual owner.

### To Change a Group's Owner

Issue the pts chown command to change a group's name.

       % pts chown  <group name> <new owner>

where

`group name`

  Specifies the current name of the group to which to assign a new owner.

`new owner`

  Names the user or group that is to own the group.

### Example: Changing a Group's Owner to Another User

In the following example, user pat transfers ownership of the group pat:staff to user terry. Its name changes automatically to terry:staff, as confirmed by the pts examine command.

       % pts chown pat:staff terry
       % pts examine terry:staff
       Name: terry:staff, id: -534, owner: terry, creator: pat,
         membership: 15, flags: SOm--, group quota: 0.

### Example: Changing a Group's Owner to Itself

In the following example, user terry makes the terry:team group a self-owned group. Its name does not change because its `owner_name` prefix is already terry.

       % pts chown terry:team terry:team
       % pts examine terry:team
       Name: terry:team, id: -286, owner: terry:team, creator: terry,
         membership: 6, flags: SOm--, group quota: 0.

### Example: Changing a Group's Owner to a Group

In this example, user sam transfers ownership of the group sam:project to the group smith:cpa. Its name changes automatically to smith:project, because smith is the `owner_name` prefix of the group that now owns it. The pts examine command displays the group's status before and after the change.

       % pts examine sam:project
       Name: sam:project, id: -522, owner: sam, creator: sam,
         membership: 33, flags: SOm--, group quota: 0.
       % pts chown sam:project smith:cpa
       % pts examine smith:project
       Name: smith:project, id: -522, owner: smith:cpa, creator: sam,
         membership: 33, flags: SOm--, group quota: 0.

### To Change a Group's Name

Issue the pts rename command to change a group's name.

       % pts rename  <old name> <new name>

where

`old name`

  Specifies the group's current name.

`new name`

  Specifies the complete new name to assign to the group. The `owner_name` prefix must correctly indicate the group's owner.

### Example: Changing a Group's `group_name` Suffix

The following example changes the name of the smith:project group to smith:fiscal-closing. The group's `owner_name` prefix remains smith because its owner is not changing.

       % pts examine smith:project
       Name: smith:project, id: -522, owner: smith:cpa, creator: sam,
         membership: 33, flags: SOm--, group quota: 0.
       % pts rename smith:project smith:fiscal-closing
       % pts examine smith:fiscal-closing
       Name: smith:fiscal-closing, id: -522, owner: smith:cpa, creator: sam,
         membership: 33, flags: SOm--, group quota: 0.

### Example: Changing a Group's `owner_name` Prefix

In a previous example, user pat transferred ownership of the group pat:staff to user terry. Its name changed automatically to terry:staff. However, a group that terry:staff owns is still called pat:plans, because the change to a group's `owner_name` that results from the pts chown command does not propagate to any groups it owns. In this example, a member of terry:staff uses the pts rename command to change the name to terry:plans to reflect its actual ownership.

       % pts examine pat:plans
       Name: pat:plans, id: -535, owner: terry:staff, creator: pat,
         membership: 8, flags: SOm--, group quota: 0.
       % pts rename pat:plans terry:plans
       % pts examine terry:plans
       Name: terry:plans, id: -535, owner: terry:staff, creator: pat,
         membership: 8, flags: SOm--, group quota: 0.

Removing Users from a Group and Deleting a Group |  | Protecting Group-Related Information