Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)

FreeBSD Manual Pages

  
 
  

home | help 
CHOWN(2)		    BSD	System Calls Manual		      CHOWN(2)

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

LIBRARY
     Standard C	Library	(libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS
     #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 ID and group ID of the file named by path or referenced by fd
     is	changed	as specified by	the arguments owner and	group.	The owner of a
     file may change the group to a group of which he or she is	a member, but
     the change	owner capability is restricted to the super-user.

     The chown() system	call 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 if not executed by the super-user.  The chown()
     system call follows symbolic links	to operate on the target of the	link
     rather than the link itself.

     The fchown() system call is particularly useful when used in conjunction
     with the file locking primitives (see flock(2)).

     The lchown() system call is similar to chown() but	does not follow	sym-
     bolic links.

     One of the	owner or group id's may	be left	unchanged by specifying	it as
     -1.

RETURN VALUES
     Upon successful completion, the value 0 is	returned; otherwise the
     value -1 is returned and the global variable errno	is set to indicate the
     error.

ERRORS
     The chown() and lchown() will fail	and the	file will be unchanged if:

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

     [ENAMETOOLONG]	A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, or
			an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters.

     [ENOENT]		The named file does not	exist.

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

     [ELOOP]		Too many symbolic links	were encountered in translat-
			ing the	pathname.

     [EPERM]		The operation would change the ownership, but the ef-
			fective	user ID	is not the super-user.

     [EPERM]		The named file has its immutable or append-only	flag
			set, see the chflags(2)	manual page for	more informa-
			tion.

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

     [EFAULT]		The path argument points outside the process's allo-
			cated address space.

     [EIO]		An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to
			the file system.

     The fchown() system call will fail	if:

     [EBADF]		The fd argument	does not refer to a valid descriptor.

     [EINVAL]		The fd argument	refers to a socket, not	a file.

     [EPERM]		The effective user ID is not the super-user.

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

     [EIO]		An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to
			the file system.

SEE ALSO
     chgrp(1), chflags(2), chmod(2), flock(2), chown(8)

STANDARDS
     The chown() system	call is	expected to conform to ISO/IEC 9945-1:1990
     ("POSIX.1").

HISTORY
     The chown() function appeared in Version 7	AT&T UNIX.  The	fchown() sys-
     tem call appeared in 4.2BSD.

     The chown() system	call was changed to follow symbolic links in 4.4BSD.
     The lchown() system call was added	in FreeBSD 3.0 to compensate for the
     loss of functionality.

BSD			       December	9, 2006				   BSD
NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUES | ERRORS | SEE ALSO | STANDARDS | HISTORY

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=chown&sektion=2&manpath=FreeBSD+7.1-RELEASE>

home | help