22.1 chcon: Change SELinux context of file

chcon changes the SELinux security context of the selected files. Synopses:

chcon [option]… context file…
chcon [option]… [-u user] [-r role] [-l range] [-t type] file…
chcon [option]… --reference=rfile file…

Change the SELinux security context of each file to context. With --reference, change the security context of each file to that of rfile.

The program accepts the following options. Also see Common options.

‘--dereference’

Do not affect symbolic links but what they refer to; this is the default.

‘-h’

‘--no-dereference’

Affect the symbolic links themselves instead of any referenced file.

‘--reference=rfile’

Use rfile’s security context rather than specifying a context value.

‘-R’

‘--recursive’

Operate on files and directories recursively.

‘--preserve-root’

Refuse to operate recursively on the root directory, /, when used together with the --recursive option. See Treating / specially.

‘--no-preserve-root’

Do not treat the root directory, /, specially when operating recursively; this is the default. See Treating / specially.

‘-H’

If --recursive (-R) is specified and a command line argument is a symbolic link to a directory, traverse it. See Traversing symlinks.

‘-L’

In a recursive traversal, traverse every symbolic link to a directory that is encountered. See Traversing symlinks.

‘-P’

Do not traverse any symbolic links. This is the default if none of -H, -L, or -P is specified. See Traversing symlinks.

‘-v’

‘--verbose’

Output a diagnostic for every file processed.

‘-u user’

‘--user=user’

Set user user in the target security context.

‘-r role’

‘--role=role’

Set role role in the target security context.

‘-t type’

‘--type=type’

Set type type in the target security context.

‘-l range’

‘--range=range’

Set range range in the target security context.

An exit status of zero indicates success, and a nonzero value indicates failure.