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



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

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 pathname exceeds {PATH_MAX} or a pathname component 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 of path is not a directory.

       EOPNOTSUPP
              The  path  argument  names a symbolic link and the implementation does not support setting the owner or group of a
              symbolic link.

       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
              Pathname resolution of a symbolic link produced an intermediate result whose length exceeds {PATH_MAX}.


       The following sections are informative.

EXAMPLES
   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  associ-
       ated 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 IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, <unistd.h>

COPYRIGHT
       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003  Edition,  Standard  for
       Information  Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6, Copy-
       right (C) 2001-2003 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.open-
       group.org/unix/online.html .



IEEE/The Open Group                                           2003                                                    LCHOWN(3P)