CHOWN
Section: System Calls (2)
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BSD mandoc
BSD 4
NAME
chown
fchown
- change owner and group of a file
SYNOPSIS
Fd #include <sys/types.h>
Fd #include <unistd.h>
Ft int
Fn chown const char *path uid_t owner gid_t group
Ft int
Fn fchown int fd uid_t owner uid_t group
DESCRIPTION
The owner ID and group ID of the file
named by
Fa path
or referenced by
Fa fd
is changed as specified by the arguments
Fa owner
and
Fa group .
The owner of a file may change the
Fa group
to a group of which
he or she is a member,
but the change
Fa owner
capability is restricted to the super-user.
Fn Chown
clears the set-user-id and set-group-id bits
on the file
to prevent accidental or mischievous creation of
set-user-id and set-group-id programs.
Fn Fchown
is particularly useful when used in conjunction
with the file locking primitives (see
flock(2)).
One of the owner or group id's
may be left unchanged by specifying it as -1.
RETURN VALUES
Zero is returned if the operation was successful;
-1 is returned if an error occurs, with a more specific
error code being placed in the global variable
errno
ERRORS
Fn Chown
will fail and the file will be unchanged if:
- Bq Er ENOTDIR
-
A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
- Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG
-
A component of a pathname exceeded
{NAME_MAX}
characters, or an entire path name exceeded
{PATH_MAX}
characters.
- Bq Er ENOENT
-
The named file does not exist.
- Bq Er EACCES
-
Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.
- Bq Er ELOOP
-
Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
- Bq Er EPERM
-
The effective user ID is not the super-user.
- Bq Er EROFS
-
The named file resides on a read-only file system.
- Bq Er EFAULT
-
Fa Path
points outside the process's allocated address space.
- Bq Er EIO
-
An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
Fn Fchown
will fail if:
- Bq Er EBADF
-
Fa Fd
does not refer to a valid descriptor.
- Bq Er EINVAL
-
Fa Fd
refers to a socket, not a file.
- Bq Er EPERM
-
The effective user ID is not the super-user.
- Bq Er EROFS
-
The named file resides on a read-only file system.
- Bq Er EIO
-
An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
SEE ALSO
chown(8),
chgrp(1),
chmod(2),
flock(2)
STANDARDS
The
Fn chown
function is expected to conform to
St -p1003.1-88 .
HISTORY
The
Fn fchown
function call appeared in
BSD 4.2
The
Fn chown
and
Fn fchown
functions were changed to follow symbolic links in
BSD 4.4
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- RETURN VALUES
-
- ERRORS
-
- SEE ALSO
-
- STANDARDS
-
- HISTORY
-
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Time: 16:29:00 GMT, April 18, 2022