|
Hopefully, this page is exactly what you are looking for, but if not, you can always find further assistance on Unix/Linux Forum!
CHOWN(2) FreeBSD 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 effective user ID is not the super-user.
[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), 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.
FreeBSD 6.2 April 19, 1994 FreeBSD 6.2
Man(1) output converted with
man2html and wrapped by fishsponge
This page was generated on Wed Sep 19 20:03:44 BST 2007
|
Man Pages 
