LCHOWN(3)                  POSIX Programmer's Manual                 LCHOWN(3)



PROLOG
       This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The OS
       implementation of this interface may differ (consult the corresponding
       OS manual page for details of OS behavior), or the interface may not be
       implemented on OS.

NAME
       lchown -- change the owner and group of a symbolic link

SYNOPSIS
       #include <unistd.h>

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

DESCRIPTION
       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
       Upon successful completion, lchown() shall return 0. Otherwise, it
       shall return -1 and set errno to indicate an error.

ERRORS
       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
   Changing the Current Owner of aa 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
       On implementations which support symbolic links as directory entries
       rather than files, lchown() may fail.

RATIONALE
       None.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS
       None.

SEE ALSO
       chown(), symlink()

       The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1-2017, <unistd.h>

COPYRIGHT
       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
       from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information Technology --
       Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
       Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright (C) 2018 by the
       Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open
       Group.  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.opengroup.org/unix/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                  2017                            LCHOWN(3)
