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35 .\" @(#)setregid.2 6.4 (Berkeley) 3/10/91
37 .\" Modified Sat Jul 24 09:08:49 1993 by Rik Faith <faith@cs.unc.edu>
38 .\" Portions extracted from linux/kernel/sys.c:
39 .\" Copyright (C) 1991, 1992 Linus Torvalds
40 .\" May be distributed under the GNU General Public License
41 .\" Changes: 1994-07-29 by Wilf <G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk>
42 .\" 1994-08-02 by Wilf due to change in kernel.
44 .\" 2004-05-27 by Michael Kerrisk
46 .TH SETREUID 2 2021-03-22 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
48 setreuid, setregid \- set real and/or effective user or group ID
51 .B #include <unistd.h>
53 .BI "int setreuid(uid_t " ruid ", uid_t " euid );
54 .BI "int setregid(gid_t " rgid ", gid_t " egid );
58 Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see
59 .BR feature_test_macros (7)):
66 .\" || _XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED
67 || /* Since glibc 2.19: */ _DEFAULT_SOURCE
68 || /* Glibc <= 2.19: */ _BSD_SOURCE
72 sets real and effective user IDs of the calling process.
74 Supplying a value of \-1 for either the real or effective user ID forces
75 the system to leave that ID unchanged.
77 Unprivileged processes may only set the effective user ID to the real user ID,
78 the effective user ID, or the saved set-user-ID.
80 Unprivileged users may only set the real user ID to
81 the real user ID or the effective user ID.
83 If the real user ID is set (i.e.,
85 is not \-1) or the effective user ID is set to a value
86 not equal to the previous real user ID,
87 the saved set-user-ID will be set to the new effective user ID.
89 Completely analogously,
91 sets real and effective group ID's of the calling process,
92 and all of the above holds with "group" instead of "user".
94 On success, zero is returned.
95 On error, \-1 is returned, and
97 is set to indicate the error.
100 there are cases where
102 can fail even when the caller is UID 0;
103 it is a grave security error to omit checking for a failure return from
108 The call would change the caller's real UID (i.e.,
110 does not match the caller's real UID),
111 but there was a temporary failure allocating the
112 necessary kernel data structures.
116 does not match the caller's real UID and this call would
117 bring the number of processes belonging to the real user ID
122 Since Linux 3.1, this error case no longer occurs
123 (but robust applications should check for this error);
124 see the description of
130 One or more of the target user or group IDs
131 is not valid in this user namespace.
134 The calling process is not privileged
135 (on Linux, does not have the necessary capability in its user namespace:
143 and a change other than (i)
144 swapping the effective user (group) ID with the real user (group) ID,
145 or (ii) setting one to the value of the other or (iii) setting the
146 effective user (group) ID to the value of the
147 saved set-user-ID (saved set-group-ID) was specified.
149 POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, 4.3BSD
153 first appeared in 4.2BSD).
155 Setting the effective user (group) ID to the
156 saved set-user-ID (saved set-group-ID) is
157 possible since Linux 1.1.37 (1.1.38).
159 POSIX.1 does not specify all of the UID changes that Linux permits
160 for an unprivileged process.
163 the effective user ID can be made the same as the
164 real user ID or the saved set-user-ID,
165 and it is unspecified whether unprivileged processes may set the
166 real user ID to the real user ID, the effective user ID, or the
170 the real group ID can be changed to the value of the saved set-group-ID,
171 and the effective group ID can be changed to the value of
172 the real group ID or the saved set-group-ID.
173 The precise details of what ID changes are permitted vary
174 across implementations.
176 POSIX.1 makes no specification about the effect of these calls
177 on the saved set-user-ID and saved set-group-ID.
183 system calls supported only 16-bit user and group IDs.
184 Subsequently, Linux 2.4 added
188 supporting 32-bit IDs.
193 wrapper functions transparently deal with the variations across kernel versions.
195 .SS C library/kernel differences
196 At the kernel level, user IDs and group IDs are a per-thread attribute.
197 However, POSIX requires that all threads in a process
198 share the same credentials.
199 The NPTL threading implementation handles the POSIX requirements by
200 providing wrapper functions for
201 the various system calls that change process UIDs and GIDs.
202 These wrapper functions (including those for
206 employ a signal-based technique to ensure
207 that when one thread changes credentials,
208 all of the other threads in the process also change their credentials.
218 .BR capabilities (7),
220 .BR user_namespaces (7)