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.1‐2008, unistd.h(0p)

COPYRIGHT         top

       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
       from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information
       Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open
       Group Base Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the
       Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open
       Group.  (This is POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1
       applied.) 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.unix.org/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                 2013                          LCHOWN(3P)

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