setuid(2) — Linux manual page

NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | VERSIONS | STANDARDS | HISTORY | NOTES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

setuid(2)                  System Calls Manual                 setuid(2)

NAME         top

       setuid - set user identity

LIBRARY         top

       Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <unistd.h>

       int setuid(uid_t uid);

DESCRIPTION         top

       setuid() sets the effective user ID of the calling process.  If
       the calling process is privileged (more precisely: if the process
       has the CAP_SETUID capability in its user namespace), the real
       UID and saved set-user-ID are also set.

       Under Linux, setuid() is implemented like the POSIX version with
       the _POSIX_SAVED_IDS feature.  This allows a set-user-ID (other
       than root) program to drop all of its user privileges, do some
       un-privileged work, and then reengage the original effective user
       ID in a secure manner.

       If the user is root or the program is set-user-ID-root, special
       care must be taken: setuid() checks the effective user ID of the
       caller and if it is the superuser, all process-related user ID's
       are set to uid.  After this has occurred, it is impossible for
       the program to regain root privileges.

       Thus, a set-user-ID-root program wishing to temporarily drop root
       privileges, assume the identity of an unprivileged user, and then
       regain root privileges afterward cannot use setuid().  You can
       accomplish this with seteuid(2).

RETURN VALUE         top

       On success, zero is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and
       errno is set to indicate the error.

       Note: there are cases where setuid() can fail even when the
       caller is UID 0; it is a grave security error to omit checking
       for a failure return from setuid().

ERRORS         top

       EAGAIN The call would change the caller's real UID (i.e., uid
              does not match the caller's real UID), but there was a
              temporary failure allocating the necessary kernel data
              structures.

       EAGAIN uid does not match the real user ID of the caller and this
              call would bring the number of processes belonging to the
              real user ID uid over the caller's RLIMIT_NPROC resource
              limit.  Since Linux 3.1, this error case no longer occurs
              (but robust applications should check for this error); see
              the description of EAGAIN in execve(2).

       EINVAL The user ID specified in uid is not valid in this user
              namespace.

       EPERM  The user is not privileged (Linux: does not have the
              CAP_SETUID capability in its user namespace) and uid does
              not match the real UID or saved set-user-ID of the calling
              process.

VERSIONS         top

   C library/kernel differences
       At the kernel level, user IDs and group IDs are a per-thread
       attribute.  However, POSIX requires that all threads in a process
       share the same credentials.  The NPTL threading implementation
       handles the POSIX requirements by providing wrapper functions for
       the various system calls that change process UIDs and GIDs.
       These wrapper functions (including the one for setuid()) employ a
       signal-based technique to ensure that when one thread changes
       credentials, all of the other threads in the process also change
       their credentials.  For details, see nptl(7).

STANDARDS         top

       POSIX.1-2008.

HISTORY         top

       POSIX.1-2001, SVr4.

       Not quite compatible with the 4.4BSD call, which sets all of the
       real, saved, and effective user IDs.

       The original Linux setuid() system call supported only 16-bit
       user IDs.  Subsequently, Linux 2.4 added setuid32() supporting
       32-bit IDs.  The glibc setuid() wrapper function transparently
       deals with the variation across kernel versions.

NOTES         top

       Linux has the concept of the filesystem user ID, normally equal
       to the effective user ID.  The setuid() call also sets the
       filesystem user ID of the calling process.  See setfsuid(2).

       If uid is different from the old effective UID, the process will
       be forbidden from leaving core dumps.

SEE ALSO         top

       getuid(2), seteuid(2), setfsuid(2), setreuid(2), capabilities(7),
       credentials(7), user_namespaces(7)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
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Linux man-pages 6.9.1          2024-05-02                      setuid(2)

Pages that refer to this page: capsh(1)access(2)execve(2)getresuid(2)getuid(2)seccomp(2)seteuid(2)setresuid(2)setreuid(2)syscalls(2)vfork(2)cap_get_proc(3)euidaccess(3)posix_spawn(3)systemd.exec(5)capabilities(7)credentials(7)nptl(7)signal-safety(7)user_namespaces(7)