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NAME
setuid - set user ID
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
int setuid(uid_t uid);
DESCRIPTION
If the process has appropriate privileges, setuid() shall set the real user ID, effective
user ID, and the saved set-user-ID of the calling process to uid.
If the process does not have appropriate privileges, but uid is equal to the real user ID
or the saved set-user-ID, setuid() shall set the effective user ID to uid; the real user
ID and saved set-user-ID shall remain unchanged.
The setuid() function shall not affect the supplementary group list in any way.
RETURN VALUE
Upon successful completion, 0 shall be returned. Otherwise, -1 shall be returned and errno
set to indicate the error.
ERRORS
The setuid() function shall fail, return -1, and set errno to the corresponding value if
one or more of the following are true:
EINVAL The value of the uid argument is invalid and not supported by the implementation.
EPERM The process does not have appropriate privileges and uid does not match the real
user ID or the saved set-user-ID.
The following sections are informative.
EXAMPLES
None.
APPLICATION USAGE
None.
RATIONALE
The various behaviors of the setuid() and setgid() functions when called by non-privileged
processes reflect the behavior of different historical implementations. For portability,
it is recommended that new non-privileged applications use the seteuid() and setegid()
functions instead.
The saved set-user-ID capability allows a program to regain the effective user ID
established at the last exec call. Similarly, the saved set-group-ID capability allows a
program to regain the effective group ID established at the last exec call. These
capabilities are derived from System V. Without them, a program might have to run as
superuser in order to perform the same functions, because superuser can write on the
user's files. This is a problem because such a program can write on any user's files, and
so must be carefully written to emulate the permissions of the calling process properly.
In System V, these capabilities have traditionally been implemented only via the setuid()
and setgid() functions for non-privileged processes. The fact that the behavior of those
functions was different for privileged processes made them difficult to use. The
POSIX.1-1990 standard defined the setuid() function to behave differently for privileged
and unprivileged users. When the caller had the appropriate privilege, the function set
the calling process' real user ID, effective user ID, and saved set-user ID on
implementations that supported it. When the caller did not have the appropriate privilege,
the function set only the effective user ID, subject to permission checks. The former use
is generally needed for utilities like login and su, which are not conforming applications
and thus outside the scope of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001. These utilities wish to change the
user ID irrevocably to a new value, generally that of an unprivileged user. The latter
use is needed for conforming applications that are installed with the set-user-ID bit and
need to perform operations using the real user ID.
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 augments the latter functionality with a mandatory feature named
_POSIX_SAVED_IDS. This feature permits a set-user-ID application to switch its effective
user ID back and forth between the values of its exec-time real user ID and effective user
ID. Unfortunately, the POSIX.1-1990 standard did not permit a conforming application using
this feature to work properly when it happened to be executed with the (implementation-
defined) appropriate privilege. Furthermore, the application did not even have a means to
tell whether it had this privilege. Since the saved set-user-ID feature is quite desirable
for applications, as evidenced by the fact that NIST required it in FIPS 151-2, it has
been mandated by IEEE Std 1003.1-2001. However, there are implementors who have been
reluctant to support it given the limitation described above.
The 4.3BSD system handles the problem by supporting separate functions: setuid() (which
always sets both the real and effective user IDs, like setuid() in IEEE Std 1003.1-2001
for privileged users), and seteuid() (which always sets just the effective user ID, like
setuid() in IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 for non-privileged users). This separation of
functionality into distinct functions seems desirable. 4.3BSD does not support the saved
set-user-ID feature. It supports similar functionality of switching the effective user ID
back and forth via setreuid(), which permits reversing the real and effective user IDs.
This model seems less desirable than the saved set-user-ID because the real user ID
changes as a side effect. The current 4.4BSD includes saved effective IDs and uses them
for seteuid() and setegid() as described above. The setreuid() and setregid() functions
will be deprecated or removed.
The solution here is:
* Require that all implementations support the functionality of the saved set-user-ID,
which is set by the exec functions and by privileged calls to setuid().
* Add the seteuid() and setegid() functions as portable alternatives to setuid() and
setgid() for non-privileged and privileged processes.
Historical systems have provided two mechanisms for a set-user-ID process to change its
effective user ID to be the same as its real user ID in such a way that it could return to
the original effective user ID: the use of the setuid() function in the presence of a
saved set-user-ID, or the use of the BSD setreuid() function, which was able to swap the
real and effective user IDs. The changes included in IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 provide a new
mechanism using seteuid() in conjunction with a saved set-user-ID. Thus, all
implementations with the new seteuid() mechanism will have a saved set-user-ID for each
process, and most of the behavior controlled by _POSIX_SAVED_IDS has been changed to agree
with the case where the option was defined. The kill() function is an exception.
Implementors of the new seteuid() mechanism will generally be required to maintain
compatibility with the older mechanisms previously supported by their systems. However,
compatibility with this use of setreuid() and with the _POSIX_SAVED_IDS behavior of kill()
is unfortunately complicated. If an implementation with a saved set-user-ID allows a
process to use setreuid() to swap its real and effective user IDs, but were to leave the
saved set-user-ID unmodified, the process would then have an effective user ID equal to
the original real user ID, and both real and saved set-user-ID would be equal to the
original effective user ID. In that state, the real user would be unable to kill the
process, even though the effective user ID of the process matches that of the real user,
if the kill() behavior of _POSIX_SAVED_IDS was used. This is obviously not acceptable. The
alternative choice, which is used in at least one implementation, is to change the saved
set-user-ID to the effective user ID during most calls to setreuid(). The standard
developers considered that alternative to be less correct than the retention of the old
behavior of kill() in such systems. Current conforming applications shall accommodate
either behavior from kill(), and there appears to be no strong reason for kill() to check
the saved set-user-ID rather than the effective user ID.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSO
exec() , getegid() , geteuid() , getgid() , getuid() , setegid() , seteuid() , setgid() ,
setregid() , setreuid() , the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001,
<sys/types.h>, <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 .