NAME
fchown — change
owner and group of a file
SYNOPSIS
#include
<unistd.h>
int fchown(int fildes, uid_t owner, gid_t group);
DESCRIPTION
The fchown () function shall be equivalent
to chown(3) except that the file whose owner and group are
changed is specified by the file descriptor
fildes.
RETURN VALUE
Upon successful completion, fchown ()
shall return 0. Otherwise, it shall return -1 and set
errno to
indicate the error.
ERRORS
The fchown () function shall fail if:
- [EBADF]
- The fildes argument is not an open file descriptor.
- [EPERM]
- The effective user ID does not match the owner of the file or the process does not have appropriate privilege and _POSIX_CHOWN_RESTRICTED indicates that such privilege is required.
- [EROFS]
- The file referred to by fildes resides on a read-only file system.
The fchown () function may fail if:
- [EINVAL]
- The owner or group ID is not a value supported by the implementation. The
fildes argument refers to a pipe or socket [XSR] or an
fattach
() -ed STREAM and the implementation disallows execution of
fchown() on a pipe. - [EIO]
- A physical I/O error has occurred.
- [EINTR]
- The
fchown() function was interrupted by a signal which was caught.
EXAMPLES
Changing the Current Owner of a File
The following example shows how to change the owner of a file named /home/cnd/mod1 to "jones" and the group to "cnd".
The numeric value for the user ID is obtained by extracting the user ID from the user database entry associated with "jones". Similarly, the numeric value for the group ID is obtained by extracting the group ID from the group database entry associated with "cnd". This example assumes the calling program has appropriate privileges.
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <pwd.h>
#include <grp.h>
struct passwd *pwd;
struct group *grp;
int fildes;
...
fildes = open("/home/cnd/mod1", O_RDWR);
pwd = getpwnam("jones");
grp = getgrnam("cnd");
fchown(fildes, pwd->pw_uid, grp->gr_gid);
APPLICATION USAGE
None.
RATIONALE
None.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSO
chown(3) , the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (“POSIX.1”), <unistd.h>
CHANGE HISTORY
First released in Issue 4, Version 2.
Issue 5
Moved from X/OPEN UNIX extension to BASE.
Issue 6
The following changes were made to align with the IEEE P1003.1a draft standard:
- Clarification is added that a call to
fchown() may not be allowed on a pipe.
The fchown () function is now defined as
mandatory.
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