NAME

     chown - change owner and group of a file


SYNOPSIS

     int chown(const char *path, int owner, int group)


DESCRIPTION

     The file that is named by  path  has  its  owner  and  group
     changed  as  specified.   Only the super-user may change the
     owner of the file, because if users were able to give  files
     away,  they  could  defeat file-space accounting procedures.
     The owner of the file may change the group  to  a  group  of
     which he is a member.

     On some systems,  chown  clears  the  set-user-id  and  set-
     group-id  bits on the file to prevent accidental creation of
     set-user-id and set-group-id programs.


RETURN VALUE

     Zero is returned if the  operation  was  successful;  -1  is
     returned if an error occurs, with a more specific error code
     being placed in the global variable errno.


ERRORS

     Chown will fail and the file will be unchanged if:

     [ENOTDIR]      A component of  the  path  prefix  is  not  a
                    directory.

     [ENAMETOOLONG] The path name exceeds PATH_MAX characters.

     [ENOENT]       The named file does not exist.

     [EACCES]       Search permission is denied for  a  component
                    of the path prefix.

     [ELOOP]        Too many symbolic links were  encountered  in
                    translating the pathname.  (Minix-vmd)

     [EPERM]        The effective user ID is not the super-user.

     [EROFS]        The named file resides on  a  read-only  file
                    system.

     [EFAULT]       Path points outside the  process's  allocated
                    address space.

     [EIO]          An I/O error occurred while reading  from  or
                    writing to the file system.


SEE ALSO

     chown(8), chgrp(1), chmod(2).