chown

[Stan Isaacs <isaacs hpcc01 corp hp com>]

  After looking at both the redhat archives, and freebsd, I guess I'm 
convinced that chown won't work, by default, for non-root users.  Is there
any way to change that default on Redhat Linux 6.1?  

  In my unix class, I have the students give me their scripts, by copying
them into my directory, and then I ask them to chown the files to me,
for practice, and so I don't have to run as root.  Not a big problem, but
if I can allow chmod, I'd like to.  Besides, I'd like them to get in the
habit of understanding chown, for future systems they might work on, so
they need (non-root) practice.

  Shouldn't the man pages for chown talk about this?  Again, how can I
keep telling my students to read the man pages, if they don't even
give facts like who can execute a command?  In fact, why isn't the command
in /usr/sbin (or /sbin?), with the other system commands?  If it won't
work for regular users, it shouldn't be accessible to them (and the man
page should say so!)

  -- Stan Isaacs