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Annotation of 43BSDReno/lib/libc/sys/chown.2, revision 1.1.1.1

1.1       root        1: .\" Copyright (c) 1980 Regents of the University of California.
                      2: .\" All rights reserved.  The Berkeley software License Agreement
                      3: .\" specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution.
                      4: .\"
                      5: .\"    @(#)chown.2     6.6 (Berkeley) 5/22/86
                      6: .\"
                      7: .TH CHOWN 2 "May 22, 1986"
                      8: .UC 4
                      9: .SH NAME
                     10: chown \- change owner and group of a file
                     11: .SH SYNOPSIS
                     12: .nf
                     13: .ft B
                     14: chown(path, owner, group)
                     15: char *path;
                     16: int owner, group;
                     17: .PP
                     18: .ft B
                     19: fchown(fd, owner, group)
                     20: int fd, owner, group;
                     21: .fi
                     22: .SH DESCRIPTION
                     23: The file
                     24: that is named by \fIpath\fP or referenced by \fIfd\fP
                     25: has its
                     26: .I owner
                     27: and 
                     28: .I group
                     29: changed as specified.
                     30: Only the super-user
                     31: may change the owner of the file,
                     32: because if users were able to give files away,
                     33: they could defeat the file-space accounting procedures.
                     34: The owner of the file may change the group
                     35: to a group of which he is a member.
                     36: .PP
                     37: On some systems,
                     38: .I chown
                     39: clears the set-user-id and set-group-id bits
                     40: on the file
                     41: to prevent accidental creation of
                     42: set-user-id and set-group-id programs.
                     43: .PP
                     44: .I Fchown
                     45: is particularly useful when used in conjunction
                     46: with the file locking primitives (see
                     47: .IR flock (2)).
                     48: .PP
                     49: One of the owner or group id's
                     50: may be left unchanged by specifying it as \-1.
                     51: .PP
                     52: If the final component of
                     53: .I path
                     54: is a symbolic link,
                     55: the ownership and group of the symbolic link is changed,
                     56: not the ownership and group of the file or directory to which it points.
                     57: .SH "RETURN VALUE
                     58: Zero is returned if the operation was successful;
                     59: \-1 is returned if an error occurs, with a more specific
                     60: error code being placed in the global variable \fIerrno\fP.
                     61: .SH "ERRORS
                     62: .I Chown
                     63: will fail and the file will be unchanged if:
                     64: .TP 15
                     65: [ENOTDIR]
                     66: A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
                     67: .TP 15
                     68: [EINVAL]
                     69: The pathname contains a character with the high-order bit set.
                     70: .TP 15
                     71: [ENAMETOOLONG]
                     72: A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters,
                     73: or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters.
                     74: .TP 15
                     75: [ENOENT]
                     76: The named file does not exist.
                     77: .TP 15
                     78: [EACCES]
                     79: Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.
                     80: .TP 15
                     81: [ELOOP]
                     82: Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
                     83: .TP 15
                     84: [EPERM]
                     85: The effective user ID is not the super-user.
                     86: .TP 15
                     87: [EROFS]
                     88: The named file resides on a read-only file system.
                     89: .TP 15
                     90: [EFAULT]
                     91: .I Path
                     92: points outside the process's allocated address space.
                     93: .TP 15
                     94: [EIO]
                     95: An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
                     96: .PP
                     97: .I Fchown
                     98: will fail if:
                     99: .TP 15
                    100: [EBADF]
                    101: .I Fd
                    102: does not refer to a valid descriptor.
                    103: .TP 15
                    104: [EINVAL]
                    105: .I Fd
                    106: refers to a socket, not a file.
                    107: .TP 15
                    108: [EPERM]
                    109: The effective user ID is not the super-user.
                    110: .TP 15
                    111: [EROFS]
                    112: The named file resides on a read-only file system.
                    113: .TP 15
                    114: [EIO]
                    115: An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
                    116: .SH "SEE ALSO"
                    117: chown(8), chgrp(1), chmod(2), flock(2)

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