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32 .\" @(#)chown.2 8.4 (Berkeley) 4/19/94
42 .Nd change owner and group of a file
48 .Fn chown "const char *path" "uid_t owner" "gid_t group"
50 .Fn fchown "int fd" "uid_t owner" "gid_t group"
52 .Fn lchown "const char *path" "uid_t owner" "gid_t group"
54 The owner ID and group ID of the file
59 is changed as specified by the arguments
63 The owner of a file may change the
66 he or she is a member,
69 capability is restricted to the super-user.
74 clears the set-user-id and set-group-id bits
76 to prevent accidental or mischievous creation of
77 set-user-id and set-group-id programs if not executed
82 follows symbolic links to operate on the target of the link
83 rather than the link itself.
88 is particularly useful when used in conjunction
89 with the file locking primitives (see
94 system call is similar to
96 but does not follow symbolic links.
98 One of the owner or group id's
99 may be left unchanged by specifying it as -1.
107 will fail and the file will be unchanged if:
110 A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
111 .It Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG
112 A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters,
113 or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters.
115 The named file does not exist.
117 Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.
119 Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
121 The effective user ID is not the super-user.
123 The named file resides on a read-only file system.
128 points outside the process's allocated address space.
130 An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
135 system call will fail if:
141 does not refer to a valid descriptor.
146 refers to a socket, not a file.
148 The effective user ID is not the super-user.
150 The named file resides on a read-only file system.
152 An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
162 system call is expected to conform to
171 system call appeared in
176 system call was changed to follow symbolic links in
180 system call was added in
182 to compensate for the loss of functionality.