chown(S)                       6 January 1993                       chown(S)


 Name

    chown - change owner and group of a file

 Syntax


    cc  . . .  -lc


    #include <sys/types.h>

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


 Description

    path points to a pathname naming a file.  The owner ID and group ID of
    the named file are set to the numeric values contained in owner and group
    respectively.

    If the process has chown kernel authorization, only processes with effec-
    tive user ID equal to the file owner or super user may change the owner-
    ship of a file.  Otherwise, only the super user may change the ownership
    of a file.  chown kernel authorization is set by a system administrator
    using the sysadmsh(ADM)) utility.

    If chown is invoked by other than the super user, the set-user-ID and
    set-group-ID bits of the file mode, 04000 and 02000 respectively, will be
    cleared.

    chown fails and the owner and group of the named file remains unchanged
    if one or more of the following is true:

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

    [EFAULT]       path points outside the allocated address space of the
                   process.

    [EINTR]        A signal was caught during the chown system call.

    [EMULTIHOP]    Components of path require hopping to multiple remote ma-
                   chines.

    [ENOENT]       The named file does not exist.

    [ENOLINK]      path points to a remote machine and the link to that ma-
                   chine is no longer active.

    [ENOTDIR]      A component of the path prefix is not a directory.

    [EPERM]        The effective user ID does not match the owner of the file
                   and the effective user ID is not super user.

    [EROFS]        The named file resides on a read-only file system.


 Diagnostics

    Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned.  Otherwise, a value
    of -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

 See also

    chmod(S), chown(C)

 Standards conformance

    chown is conformant with:
    AT&T SVID Issue 2;
    X/Open Portability Guide, Issue 3, 1989;
    IEEE POSIX Std 1003.1-1990 System Application Program Interface (API) [C
    Language] (ISO/IEC 9945-1);
    and NIST FIPS 151-1.