NAME¶
setuid - set user identity
SYNOPSIS¶
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>
int setuid(uid_t uid);
DESCRIPTION¶
setuid() sets the effective user ID of the calling process. If the
effective UID of the caller is root, the real UID and saved set-user-ID are
also set.
Under Linux,
setuid() is implemented like the POSIX version with the
_POSIX_SAVED_IDS feature. This allows a set-user-ID (other than root)
program to drop all of its user privileges, do some un-privileged work, and
then reengage the original effective user ID in a secure manner.
If the user is root or the program is set-user-ID-root, special care must be
taken. The
setuid() function checks the effective user ID of the caller
and if it is the superuser, all process-related user ID's are set to
uid. After this has occurred, it is impossible for the program to
regain root privileges.
Thus, a set-user-ID-root program wishing to temporarily drop root privileges,
assume the identity of an unprivileged user, and then regain root privileges
afterward cannot use
setuid(). You can accomplish this with
seteuid(2).
RETURN VALUE¶
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and
errno is set
appropriately.
Note: there are cases where
setuid() can fail even when the caller
is UID 0; it is a grave security error to omit checking for a failure return
from
setuid().
ERRORS¶
- EAGAIN
- The call would change the caller's real UID (i.e., uid does not
match the caller's real UID), but there was a temporary failure allocating
the necessary kernel data structures.
- EAGAIN
- uid does not match the real user ID of the caller and this call
would bring the number of processes belonging to the real user ID
uid over the caller's RLIMIT_NPROC resource limit. Since
Linux 3.1, this error case no longer occurs (but robust applications
should check for this error); see the description of EAGAIN in
execve(2).
- EINVAL
- The user ID specified in uid is not valid in this user
namespace.
- EPERM
- The user is not privileged (Linux: does not have the CAP_SETUID
capability) and uid does not match the real UID or saved
set-user-ID of the calling process.
SVr4, POSIX.1-2001. Not quite compatible with the 4.4BSD call, which sets all of
the real, saved, and effective user IDs.
NOTES¶
Linux has the concept of the filesystem user ID, normally equal to the effective
user ID. The
setuid() call also sets the filesystem user ID of the
calling process. See
setfsuid(2).
If
uid is different from the old effective UID, the process will be
forbidden from leaving core dumps.
The original Linux
setuid() system call supported only 16-bit user IDs.
Subsequently, Linux 2.4 added
setuid32() supporting 32-bit IDs. The
glibc
setuid() wrapper function transparently deals with the variation
across kernel versions.
SEE ALSO¶
getuid(2),
seteuid(2),
setfsuid(2),
setreuid(2),
capabilities(7),
credentials(7),
user_namespaces(7)
COLOPHON¶
This page is part of release 3.74 of the Linux
man-pages project. A
description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest
version of this page, can be found at
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
