What happens if you try to use chown on a symbolic link without special options?

• A. The owner and group will change on the file that the symbolic link refers to.
• B. The owner and group will change on the symbolic link itself.
• C. Nothing happens.
• D. An error is returned.

Answer: (D)

The behavior being tested is how chown handles symbolic links. By default, chown follows the link and changes the ownership of the file that the link points to, not the link itself. If you want to change the link’s own owner, you must use the no-dereference option (often shown as -h). In practice, the command will succeed in changing the target’s owner if you have the necessary privileges; if you don’t have permission to modify that target, the command will report an error. So the outcome depends on your permissions rather than always altering the link or always failing.