CHOWN(2)							      CHOWN(2)

NAME    [Toc]    [Back]

     chown, fchown, lchown - change owner and group of a file

C SYNOPSIS    [Toc]    [Back]

     #include <sys/types.h>
     #include <unistd.h>

     int chown (const char *path, uid_t	owner, gid_t group);

     int lchown	(const char *path, uid_t owner,	gid_t group);

     int fchown	(int fd, uid_t owner, gid_t group);

DESCRIPTION    [Toc]    [Back]

     Path points to a path name	naming a file, and fd refers to	the file
     descriptor	associated with	a file.	 The owner ID and group	ID of the
     named file	are set	to the numeric values contained	in owner and group
     respectively.  Note that lchown differs from chown	in that	it does	not
     follow symbolic links.

     Only processes with effective user	ID equal to the	file owner or superuser
 may change the ownership of a	file.

     However, if the variable restricted_chown is enabled [see intro(2)	and
     lboot(1M)]	then only the super-user can change the	owner of the file,
     because if	users were able	to give	files away, they could defeat the file
     space accounting procedures. The owner of the file	may change the group
     ownership only to those groups of which he	is a member.

     If	chown, lchown, or fchown is invoked by other than the super-user, the
     set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits of the file mode, 04000 and 02000
     respectively, will	be cleared.  Note that this has	the side-effect	of
     disabling mandatory file/record locking.

     Either the	owner or group ID may be left unchanged	by specifying it as
     -1.

     Upon successful completion, chown,	lchown,	and fchown mark	for update the
     st_ctime field [see stat(2)] of the file.

     chown, and	lchown,	will fail and the owner	and group of the named file
     will remain unchanged if one or more of the following are true:

     [ENOTDIR]	      A	component of the path prefix is	not a directory.

     [ENOENT]	      The named	file does not exist.

     [EACCES]	      Search permission	is denied on a component of the	path
		      prefix.






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CHOWN(2)							      CHOWN(2)



     [EPERM]	      The effective user ID does not match the owner of	the
		      file and the effective user ID is	not super-user.

     [EPERM]	      restricted_chown is enabled and the effective user ID is
		      not the super-user.

     [EINVAL]	      The owner	or group value is out of the valid range of
		      -1, MAXUID.

     [EROFS]	      The named	file resides on	a read-only file system.

     [EFAULT]	      Path points outside the allocated	address	space of the
		      process.

     [ELOOP]	      A	path name lookup involved too many symbolic links.

     [ENAMETOOLONG]   The length of path exceeds {PATH_MAX}, or	a pathname
		      component	is longer than {NAME_MAX}.

     fchown will fail if:

     [EBADF]	    Fd does not	refer to a valid descriptor.

     [EINVAL]	    Fd refers to a socket, not a file.	The owner or group
		    value is out of the	valid range of -1, MAXUID.

SEE ALSO    [Toc]    [Back]

     chown(1), chmod(2), fchmod(2)

DIAGNOSTICS    [Toc]    [Back]

     Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned.  Otherwise, a value
     of	-1 is returned and errno is set	to indicate the	error.


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