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 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 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, Copyright (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.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .

IEEE/The Open Group                                   2003                                             LCHOWN(P)