``chown -h owner symlink'' did not set the symlink's owner
if the file the symlink points to already had that owner:
# ls -l alink afile
-rw-r--r-- 1 nobody ru 0 May 31 14:14 afile
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root ru 5 May 31 14:14 alink -> afile
# ./chown -h -v nobody alink
# ls -l alink afile
-rw-r--r-- 1 nobody ru 0 May 31 14:14 afile
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root ru 5 May 31 14:14 alink -> afile
Similarly for chgrp(1) and chmod(1).