CHOWN(S) UNIX System V CHOWN(S)
Name
chown - change owner and group of a file
Syntax
int chown (path, owner, group)
char *path;
int owner, group;
Description
path points to a path name 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.
Only processes with effective user ID equal to the file
owner or super-user may change the ownership of a file.
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 will fail and the owner and group of the named file
will remain unchanged if one or more of the following is
true:
[ENOTDIR] A component of the path prefix is not a
directory.
[ENOENT] The named file does not exist.
[EACCES] Search permission is denied on a component of
the path prefix.
[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.
[EFAULT] path points outside the allocated address
space of the process.
[EINTR] A signal was caught during the chown system
call.
[ENOLINK] path points to a remote machine and the link
to that machine is no longer active.
[EMULTIHOP] Components of path require hopping to
multiple remote machines.
See Also
chmod(S), chown(C).
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.
Standards Conformance
chown is conformant with:
AT&T SVID Issue 2, Select Code 307-127;
The X/Open Portability Guide II of January 1987;
IEEE POSIX Std 1003.1-1988 with C Standard Language-
Dependent System Support;
and NIST FIPS 151-1.
(printed 6/20/89)