CHOWN (2)
change ownership of a file
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>
int chown(const char * path , uid_t owner , gid_t group );
int fchown(int fd , uid_t owner , gid_t group );
int lchown(const char * path , uid_t owner , gid_t group );
DESCRIPTION
The owner of the file specified by
path
or by
fd
is changed. Only the super-user may change the owner of a file. The owner
of a file may change the group of the file to any group of which that owner
is a member. The super-user may change the group arbitrarily.
If the
owner
or
group
is specified as -1, then that ID is not changed.
When the owner or group of an executable file are changed by a non-super-user,
the S_ISUID and S_ISGID mode bits are cleared. POSIX does not specify whether
this also should happen when root does the
chown ;
the Linux behaviour depends on the kernel version.
In case of a non-group-executable file (with clear S_IXGRP bit)
the S_ISGID bit indicates mandatory locking, and is not cleared
by a
chown .
RETURN VALUE
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and
errno
is set appropriately.
ERRORS
NOTES
CONFORMING TO
The
chown
call conforms to SVr4, SVID, POSIX, X/OPEN. The 4.4BSD version can only be
used by the superuser (that is, ordinary users cannot give away files).
SVr4 documents EINVAL, EINTR, ENOLINK and EMULTIHOP returns, but no
ENOMEM. POSIX.1 does not document ENOMEM or ELOOP error conditions.
The
fchown
call conforms to 4.4BSD and SVr4.
SVr4 documents additional EINVAL, EIO, EINTR, and ENOLINK error conditions.
RESTRICTIONS
The chown() semantics are deliberately violated on NFS file systems
which have UID mapping enabled. Additionally, the semantics of all system
calls which access the file contents are violated, because chown()
may cause immediate access revocation on already open files. Client side
caching may lead to a delay between the time where ownership have
been changed to allow access for a user and the time where the file can
actually be accessed by the user on other clients.
SEE ALSO
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