fchownat()

The fchownat() system call operates in exactly the same way as chown(), except for the differences described here.

If the pathname given in pathname is relative, then it is interpreted relative to the directory referred to by the file descriptor dirfd (rather than relative to the current working directory of the calling process, as is done by chown() for a relative pathname).

If pathname is relative and dirfd is the special value AT_FDCWD, then pathname is interpreted relative to the current working directory of the calling process (like chown()).

If pathname is absolute, then dirfd is ignored.

The flags argument is a bit mask created by ORing together 0 or more of the following values;

See openat(2) for an explanation of the need for fchownat().

Ownership of new files

When a new file is created (by, for example, open(2) or mkdir(2)), its owner is made the same as the filesystem user ID of the creating process. The group of the file depends on a range of factors, including the type of filesystem, the options used to mount the filesystem, and whether or not the set-group-ID mode bit is enabled on the parent directory. If the filesystem supports the −o grpid (or, synonymously −o bsdgroups) and −o nogrpid (or, synonymously −o sysvgroups) mount(8) options, then the rules are as follows:

As at Linux 2.6.25, the −o grpid and −o nogrpid mount options are supported by ext2, ext3, ext4, and XFS. Filesystems that don't support these mount options follow the −o nogrpid rules.

Glibc notes

On older kernels where fchownat() is unavailable, the glibc wrapper function falls back to the use of chown() and lchown(). When pathname is a relative pathname, glibc constructs a pathname based on the symbolic link in /proc/self/fd that corresponds to the dirfd argument.

NFS

The chown() semantics are deliberately violated on NFS filesystems which have UID mapping enabled. Additionally, the semantics of all system calls which access the file contents are violated, because chown() may cause immediate access revocation on already open files. Client side caching may lead to a delay between the time where ownership have been changed to allow access for a user and the time where the file can actually be accessed by the user on other clients.

Historical details

The original Linux chown(), fchown(), and lchown() system calls supported only 16-bit user and group IDs. Subsequently, Linux 2.4 added chown32(), fchown32(), and lchown32(), supporting 32-bit IDs. The glibc chown(), fchown(), and lchown() wrapper functions transparently deal with the variations across kernel versions.

In versions of Linux prior to 2.1.81 (and distinct from 2.1.46), chown() did not follow symbolic links. Since Linux 2.1.81, chown() does follow symbolic links, and there is a new system call lchown() that does not follow symbolic links. Since Linux 2.1.86, this new call (that has the same semantics as the old chown()) has got the same syscall number, and chown() got the newly introduced number.

Program source

#include <pwd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    uid_t uid;
    struct passwd *pwd;
    char *endptr;

    if (argc != 3 || argv[1][0] == '\0') {
        fprintf(stderr, "%s <owner> <file>\n", argv[0]);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    uid = strtol(argv[1], &endptr, 10);  /* Allow a numeric string */

    if (*endptr != '\0') {         /* Was not pure numeric string */
        pwd = getpwnam(argv[1]);   /* Try getting UID for username */
        if (pwd == NULL) {
            perror("getpwnam");
            exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
        }

        uid = pwd−>pw_uid;
    }

    if (chown(argv[2], uid, −1) == −1) {
        perror("chown");
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}