CHOWN(2)                  386BSD Programmer's Manual                  CHOWN(2)

NAME
     chown, fchown - change owner and group of a file

SYNOPSIS
     #include <unistd.h>

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

     int
     fchown(int fd, int owner, int 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.

     Chown() clears the set-user-id and set-group-id bits on the file to
     prevent accidental or mischievious creation of set-user-id and set-group-
     id programs.

     Fchown() is particularly useful when used in conjunction with the file
     locking primitives (see flock(2)).

     One of the owner or group id's may be left unchanged by specifying it as
     -1.

     If the final component of path is a symbolic link, the ownership and
     group of the symbolic link is changed, not the ownership and group of the
     file or directory to which it points.

RETURN VALUES
     Zero is returned if the operation was successful; -1 is returned if an
     error occurs, with a more specific error code being placed in the global
     variable errno.

ERRORS
     Chown() will fail and the file will be unchanged if:

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

     [EINVAL]      The pathname contains a character with the high-order bit
                   set.

     [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 translating the
                   pathname.

     [EPERM]       The effective user ID is not the super-user.

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

     [EFAULT]      Path points outside the process's allocated address space.


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

     Fchown() will fail if:

     [EBADF]       Fd does not refer to a valid descriptor.

     [EINVAL]      Fd 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
     chown(8),  chgrp(1),  chmod(2),  flock(2)

STANDARDS
     Chown() is expected to conform to IEEE Std 1003.1-1988 (``POSIX'').

HISTORY
     The fchown() function call appeared in 4.2BSD.

4th Berkeley Distribution       March 10, 1991                               2