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NAME
setfsgid - set group identity used for filesystem checks
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/fsuid.h>
int setfsgid(uid_t fsgid);
DESCRIPTION
The system call setfsgid() changes the value of the caller's filesystem group ID—the group ID that the
Linux kernel uses to check for all accesses to the filesystem. Normally, the value of the filesystem
group ID will shadow the value of the effective group ID. In fact, whenever the effective group ID is
changed, the filesystem group ID will also be changed to the new value of the effective group ID.
Explicit calls to setfsuid(2) and setfsgid() are usually used only by programs such as the Linux NFS
server that need to change what user and group ID is used for file access without a corresponding change
in the real and effective user and group IDs. A change in the normal user IDs for a program such as the
NFS server is a security hole that can expose it to unwanted signals. (But see below.)
setfsgid() will succeed only if the caller is the superuser or if fsgid matches either the caller's real
group ID, effective group ID, saved set-group-ID, or current the filesystem user ID.
RETURN VALUE
On both success and failure, this call returns the previous filesystem group ID of the caller.
VERSIONS
This system call is present in Linux since version 1.2.
CONFORMING TO
setfsgid() is Linux-specific and should not be used in programs intended to be portable.
NOTES
Note that at the time this system call was introduced, a process could send a signal to a process with
the same effective user ID. Today signal permission handling is slightly different. See setfsuid(2) for
a discussion of why the use of both setfsuid(2) and setfsgid() is nowadays unneeded.
The original Linux setfsgid() system call supported only 16-bit group IDs. Subsequently, Linux 2.4 added
setfsgid32() supporting 32-bit IDs. The glibc setfsgid() wrapper function transparently deals with the
variation across kernel versions.
C library/kernel differences
In glibc 2.15 and earlier, when the wrapper for this system call determines that the argument can't be
passed to the kernel without integer truncation (because the kernel is old and does not support 32-bit
group IDs), they will return -1 and set errno to EINVAL without attempting the system call.
BUGS
No error indications of any kind are returned to the caller, and the fact that both successful and
unsuccessful calls return the same value makes it impossible to directly determine whether the call
succeeded or failed. Instead, the caller must resort to looking at the return value from a further call
such as setfsgid(-1) (which will always fail), in order to determine if a preceding call to setfsgid()
changed the filesystem group ID. At the very least, EPERM should be returned when the call fails
(because the caller lacks the CAP_SETGID capability).
SEE ALSO
kill(2), setfsuid(2), capabilities(7), credentials(7)
COLOPHON
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