chown illegal group name (mac os x)

Question

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.

Solution 1

illegal group name actually means that the group you're specifying (the couchdb after the colon -- the first couchdb is the user) doesn't exist. You need to either create the group, stop specifying a group, or specify a group that exists.

Solution 2

Try using just the owner if no group.

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

Comments

[egon]

Thanks for your help - went back to look at this code from way back to see what I ended up doing. Seems like I omitted the couchdb:couchdb part (since the log is in that location and working properly). So if anyone else is looking: chown -R username /usr/local/var/log/couchdb

[egon]

thank you! sorry for the late response - very much appreciate this.

[Touqeer]

If you don't want to create group then just do sudo chown -R <username>: /usr/local/var/log/couchdb form @jackotonye's answer.

[Kemal Cankurt]

there was $ sign before my username it worked when I deleted the sign. you may also see your user name on top of the terminal window.