chown illegal group name (mac os x)

macos unix terminal chown
egon picture egon · Apr 12, 2013 · Viewed 90.8k times · Source

I'm trying to run the following command in Terminal: 

chown -R couchdb:couchdb /usr/local/var/log/couchdb

However, I keep getting this message:

chown: couchdb: illegal group name

I am using mac osx (mountain lion) and I have command line tools installed. I really don't know very much about unix, but I've been googling the illegal group name error and haven't turned up anything that would help. What am I overlooking? Any additional resources you think might be helpful also appreciated.

Answer

jackotonye picture jackotonye · Apr 7, 2017

Try using just the owner if no group.

sudo chown -R user: /usr/local/var/log/couchdb

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