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

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.

Answer 1

Try using just the owner if no group.

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