lchown(3p) — Linux manual page

PROLOG | NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | EXAMPLES | APPLICATION USAGE | RATIONALE | FUTURE DIRECTIONS | SEE ALSO | COPYRIGHT

LCHOWN(3P)              POSIX Programmer's Manual             LCHOWN(3P)

PROLOG         top

       This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The
       Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult the
       corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior),
       or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME         top

       lchown — change the owner and group of a symbolic link

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <unistd.h>

       int lchown(const char *path, uid_t owner, gid_t group);

DESCRIPTION         top

       The lchown() function shall be equivalent to chown(), except in
       the case where the named file is a symbolic link. In this case,
       lchown() shall change the ownership of the symbolic link file
       itself, while chown() changes the ownership of the file or
       directory to which the symbolic link refers.

RETURN VALUE         top

       Upon successful completion, lchown() shall return 0. Otherwise,
       it shall return -1 and set errno to indicate an error.

ERRORS         top

       The lchown() function shall fail if:

       EACCES Search permission is denied on a component of the path
              prefix of path.

       EINVAL The owner or group ID is not a value supported by the
              implementation.

       ELOOP  A loop exists in symbolic links encountered during
              resolution of the path argument.

       ENAMETOOLONG
              The length of a component of a pathname is longer than
              {NAME_MAX}.

       ENOENT A component of path does not name an existing file or path
              is an empty string.

       ENOTDIR
              A component of the path prefix names an existing file that
              is neither a directory nor a symbolic link to a directory,
              or the path argument contains at least one non-<slash>
              character and ends with one or more trailing <slash>
              characters and the last pathname component names an
              existing file that is neither a directory nor a symbolic
              link to a directory.

       EPERM  The effective user ID does not match the owner of the file
              and the process does not have appropriate privileges.

       EROFS  The file resides on a read-only file system.

       The lchown() function may fail if:

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

       EINTR  A signal was caught during execution of the function.

       ELOOP  More than {SYMLOOP_MAX} symbolic links were encountered
              during resolution of the path argument.

       ENAMETOOLONG
              The length of a pathname exceeds {PATH_MAX}, or pathname
              resolution of a symbolic link produced an intermediate
              result with a length that exceeds {PATH_MAX}.

       The following sections are informative.

EXAMPLES         top

   Changing the Current Owner of a File
       The following example shows how to change the ownership of the
       symbolic link named /modules/pass1 to the user ID associated with
       ``jones'' and the group ID associated with ``cnd''.

       The numeric value for the user ID is obtained by using the
       getpwnam() function. The numeric value for the group ID is
       obtained by using the getgrnam() function.

           #include <sys/types.h>
           #include <unistd.h>
           #include <pwd.h>
           #include <grp.h>

           struct passwd *pwd;
           struct group  *grp;
           char          *path = "/modules/pass1";
           ...
           pwd = getpwnam("jones");
           grp = getgrnam("cnd");
           lchown(path, pwd->pw_uid, grp->gr_gid);

APPLICATION USAGE         top

       On implementations which support symbolic links as directory
       entries rather than files, lchown() may fail.

RATIONALE         top

       None.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS         top

       None.

SEE ALSO         top

       chown(3p), symlink(3p)

       The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, unistd.h(0p)

COPYRIGHT         top

       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic
       form from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information
       Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The
       Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright
       (C) 2018 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
       Engineers, Inc and The Open Group.  In the event of any
       discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The
       Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group
       Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can be
       obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .

       Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page
       are most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of
       the source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .

IEEE/The Open Group               2017                        LCHOWN(3P)

Pages that refer to this page: unistd.h(0p)chown(3p)symlink(3p)