chown illegal group name (mac os x) [closed]

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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 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.

Answer 2

Try using just the owner if no group.

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