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.\" @(#)chown.2 8.4 (Berkeley) 4/19/94
.Nd change owner and group of a file
.Fn chown "const char *path" "uid_t owner" "gid_t group"
.Fn fchown "int fd" "uid_t owner" "uid_t group"
The owner ID and group ID of the file
is changed as specified by the arguments
The owner of a file may change the
capability is restricted to the super-user.
clears the set-user-id and set-group-id bits
to prevent accidental or mischievous creation of
set-user-id and set-group-id programs.
is particularly useful when used in conjunction
with the file locking primitives (see
One of the owner or group id's
may be left unchanged by specifying it as -1.
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
will fail and the file will be unchanged if:
A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
The pathname contains a character with the high-order bit set.
A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters,
or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters.
The named file does not exist.
Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.
Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
The effective user ID is not the super-user.
The named file resides on a read-only file system.
points outside the process's allocated address space.
An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
does not refer to a valid descriptor.
refers to a socket, not a file.
The effective user ID is not the super-user.
The named file resides on a read-only file system.
An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
is expected to conform to IEEE Std 1003.1-1988
functions were changed to follow symbolic links in