1 .\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1991, 1993, 1994
2 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
4 .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
5 .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
7 .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
8 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
9 .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
10 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
11 .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
12 .\" 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
13 .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
14 .\" without specific prior written permission.
16 .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
17 .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
18 .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
19 .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
20 .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
21 .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
22 .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
23 .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
24 .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
25 .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
28 .\" @(#)chown.2 8.4 (Berkeley) 4/19/94
38 .Nd change owner and group of a file
44 .Fn chown "const char *path" "uid_t owner" "gid_t group"
46 .Fn fchown "int fd" "uid_t owner" "gid_t group"
48 .Fn lchown "const char *path" "uid_t owner" "gid_t group"
50 The owner ID and group ID of the file
55 is changed as specified by the arguments
59 The owner of a file may change the
62 he or she is a member,
65 capability is restricted to the super-user.
70 clears the set-user-id and set-group-id bits
72 to prevent accidental or mischievous creation of
73 set-user-id and set-group-id programs if not executed
78 follows symbolic links to operate on the target of the link
79 rather than the link itself.
84 is particularly useful when used in conjunction
85 with the file locking primitives (see
90 system call is similar to
92 but does not follow symbolic links.
94 One of the owner or group id's
95 may be left unchanged by specifying it as -1.
103 will fail and the file will be unchanged if:
106 A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
107 .It Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG
108 A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters,
109 or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters.
111 The named file does not exist.
113 Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.
115 Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
117 The operation would change the ownership, but the effective user ID is not the
120 The named file has its immutable or append-only flag set, see the
122 manual page for more information.
124 The named file resides on a read-only file system.
129 points outside the process's allocated address space.
131 An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
136 system call will fail if:
142 does not refer to a valid descriptor.
147 refers to a socket, not a file.
149 The effective user ID is not the super-user.
151 The named file resides on a read-only file system.
153 An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
164 system call is expected to conform to
173 system call appeared in
178 system call was changed to follow symbolic links in
182 system call was added in
184 to compensate for the loss of functionality.