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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | EXIT STATUS | AUTHOR | REPORTING BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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CAPSH(1) User Commands CAPSH(1)
capsh - capability shell wrapper
capsh [OPTION]...
Linux capability support and use can be explored and constrained
with this tool. This tool provides a handy wrapper for certain
types of capability testing and environment creation. It also
provides some debugging features useful for summarizing capability
state.
capsh takes a number of optional arguments, acting on them in the
order they are provided. They are as follows:
--help Display the list of commands supported by capsh.
--print
Display prevailing capability and related state.
--current
Display prevailing capability state, 1e capabilities and
IAB vector.
-- [args]
Execute /bin/bash with trailing arguments. Note, you can
use -c 'command to execute' for specific commands.
-+ [args]
Uses cap_launch(3) to fork a child to execute the shell.
When the child exits, capsh exits with the status of the
child or 1 in the case that the child was terminated by a
signal.
== [args]
Execute capsh again with the remaining arguments. Useful
for testing exec() behavior. Note, PATH is searched when
the running capsh was found via the shell's PATH searching.
If the exec occurs after a --chroot=/some/path argument the
PATH located binary may not be resolve to the same binary
as that running initially. This behavior is an intended
feature as it can complete the chroot transition.
=+ [args]
Uses cap_launch(3) to fork a child to re-execute capsh.
When this child exits, capsh exits with the status of the
child or 1 in the case that the child was terminated by a
signal.
--caps=cap-set
Set the prevailing process capabilities to those specified
by cap-set. Where cap-set is a text-representation of a
capability `Set' as per cap_text_formats(7).
--drop=cap-list
Remove the listed capabilities from the prevailing bounding
set. The capabilities are a comma-separated list of
capabilities as recognized by the cap_from_name(3)
function. Use of this feature requires that capsh is
operating with CAP_SETPCAP in its effective set.
--inh=cap-list
Set the inheritable set of capabilities for the current
process to equal those provided in the comma separated
list. For this action to succeed, the prevailing process
should already have each of these capabilities in the union
of the current inheritable and permitted capability sets,
or capsh should be operating with CAP_SETPCAP in its
effective set.
--user=username
Assume the identity of the named user. That is, look up the
user's UID and GID with getpwuid(3) and their group
memberships with getgrouplist(3) and set them all using
cap_setuid(3) and cap_setgroups(3). Following this
command, the effective capabilities will be cleared, but
the permitted set will not be, so the running program is
still privileged.
--mode Display the prevailing libcap mode as guessed by the
cap_get_mode(3) function.
--mode=<mode>
Force the program into a cap_set_mode(3) security mode.
This is a set of securebits and prevailing capability
arrangement recommended for its pre-determined security
stance.
--modes
Lists all of the libcap modes supported by --mode=<mode>.
--inmode=<mode>
Confirm that the prevailing mode is that specified in
<mode>, or exit with a status 1.
--uid=id
Force all UID values to equal id using the setuid(2) system
call. This argument may require explicit preparation of the
effective set.
--cap-uid=<uid>
use the cap_setuid(3) function to set the UID of the
current process. This performs all preparations for setting
the UID without dropping capabilities in the process.
Following this command the prevailing effective
capabilities will be lowered.
--is-uid=<id>
Exit with status 1 unless the current UID equals <id>.
--gid=<id>
Force all GID values to equal id using the setgid(2) system
call.
--is-gid=<id>
Exit with status 1 unless the current GIQ equals <id>.
--groups=<gid-list>
Set the supplementary groups to the numerical list
provided. The groups are set with the setgroups(2) system
call. See --user for a more convenient way of doing this.
--keep=<0|1>
In a non-pure capability mode, the kernel provides liberal
privilege to the super-user. However, it is normally the
case that when the super-user changes UID to some lesser
user, then capabilities are dropped. For these situations,
the kernel can permit the process to retain its
capabilities after a setuid(2) system call. This feature is
known as keep-caps support. The way to activate it using
this program is with this argument. Setting the value to 1
will cause keep-caps to be active. Setting it to 0 will
cause keep-caps to deactivate for the current process. In
all cases, keep-caps is deactivated when an exec() is
performed. See --secbitsand--mode for ways to disable this
feature.
--secbits=N
Set the security-bits for the program. This is done using
the prctl(2) PR_SET_SECUREBITS operation. The list of
supported bits and their meaning can be found in the
<sys/secbits.h> header file. The program will list these
bits via the --print command. The argument is expressed as
a numeric bitmask, in any of the formats permitted by
strtoul(3). An alternative to this bit-twiddling is
embedded in the --mode* commandline arguments.
--chroot=/some/path
Execute the chroot(2) system call with the new root-
directory (/) equal to path. This operation requires
CAP_SYS_CHROOT to be in effect.
--forkfor=sec
This command causes the program to fork a child process for
so many seconds. The child will sleep that long and then
exit with status 0. The purpose of this command is to
support exploring the way processes are killable in the
face of capability changes. See the --killit command. Only
one fork can be active at a time.
--killit=sig
This commands causes a --forkfor child to be kill(2)d with
the specified signal. The command then waits for the child
to exit. If the exit status does not match the signal
being used to kill it, the capsh program exits with status
1.
--explain=cap_xxx
Give a brief textual description of what privileges the
specified capability makes available to a running program.
Note, instead of cap_xxx, one can provide a decimal number
and capsh will look up the corresponding capability's
description.
--shell=/full/path
This option changes the shell that is invoked when the
argument == is encountered.
--strict
This option toggles the suppression of subsequent attempts
to fixup --caps= and --inh= arguments. That is, when the
prevailing Effective flag does not contain CAP_SETPCAP the
to be raised Inheritable Flag values (in strict mode) are
limited to those in the Permitted set. The strict mode
defaults to off. Supplying this argument an even number of
times restores this default behavior.
--suggest=phrase
Scan each of the textual descriptions of capabilities,
known to capsh, and display all descriptions that include
phrase.
--decode=N
This is a convenience feature. If you look at
/proc/1/status there are some capability related fields of
the following form:
CapInh: 0000000000000000
CapPrm: 0000003fffffffff
CapEff: 0000003fffffffff
CapBnd: 0000003fffffffff
CapAmb: 0000000000000000
This option provides a quick way to decode a capability
vector represented in this hexadecimal form. Here's an
example that decodes the two lowest capability bits:
$ capsh --decode=3
0x0000000000000003=cap_chown,cap_dac_override
--supports=xxx
As the kernel evolves, more capabilities are added. This
option can be used to verify the existence of a capability
on the system. For example, --supports=cap_syslog will
cause capsh to promptly exit with a status of 1 when run on
kernel 2.6.27. However, when run on kernel 2.6.38 it will
silently succeed.
--has-p=xxx
Exit with status 1 unless the permitted vector has
capability xxx raised.
--has-ambient
Performs a check to see if the running kernel supports
ambient capabilities. If not, capsh exits with status 1.
--has-a=xxx
Exit with status 1 unless the ambient vector has capability
xxx raised.
--has-b=xxx
Exit with status 1 unless the bounding vector has
capability xxx in its (default) non-blocked state.
--iab=xxx
Attempts to set the IAB tuple of inheritable capability
vectors. The text conventions used for xxx are those of
cap_iab_from_text(3), and described in cap_text_formats(7).
--addamb=xxx
Adds the specified ambient capability to the running
process.
--delamb=xxx
Removes the specified ambient capability from the running
process.
--noamb
Drops all ambient capabilities from the running process.
--noenv
Suppresses overriding of the HOME and USER environment
variables when a subsequent --user argument is processed.
--quiet
This argument is ignored unless it is the first one. If
present, it suppresses the capsh runtime check to confirm
the running libcap is recent enough that it can name all of
the kernel supported capability values.
Following successful execution, capsh exits with status 0.
Following an error, capsh immediately exits with status 1.
Written by Andrew G. Morgan <[email protected]>.
Please report bugs via:
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/buglist.cgi?component=libcap&list_id=1090757
libcap(3), cap_from_text(3), cap_iab(3), cap_text_formats(7),
capabilities(7), captree(8), getcap(8), getpcaps(8), and
setcap(8).
This page is part of the libcap (capabilities commands and
library) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/libs/libcap/libcap.git/⟩. If you
have a bug report for this manual page, send it to
[email protected] (please put "libcap" in the Subject line). This
page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/libs/libcap/libcap.git/⟩ on
2025-08-11. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
that was found in the repository was 2025-08-10.) If you discover
any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page,
or you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a
mail to [email protected]
libcap 2025-03-19 CAPSH(1)
Pages that refer to this page: cap_get_proc(3), libcap(3), capabilities(7), cap_text_formats(7), getcap(8), getpcaps(8), setcap(8)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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