seteuid(2) — Linux manual page

NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | VERSIONS | STANDARDS | HISTORY | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

seteuid(2)                 System Calls Manual                seteuid(2)

NAME         top

       seteuid, setegid - set effective user or group ID

LIBRARY         top

       Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <unistd.h>

       int seteuid(uid_t euid);
       int setegid(gid_t egid);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see
   feature_test_macros(7)):

       seteuid(), setegid():
           _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200112L
               || /* glibc <= 2.19: */ _BSD_SOURCE

DESCRIPTION         top

       seteuid() sets the effective user ID of the calling process.
       Unprivileged processes may only set the effective user ID to the
       real user ID, the effective user ID or the saved set-user-ID.

       Precisely the same holds for setegid() with "group" instead of
       "user".

RETURN VALUE         top

       On success, zero is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and
       errno is set to indicate the error.

       Note: there are cases where seteuid() can fail even when the
       caller is UID 0; it is a grave security error to omit checking
       for a failure return from seteuid().

ERRORS         top

       EINVAL The target user or group ID is not valid in this user
              namespace.

       EPERM  In the case of seteuid(): the calling process is not
              privileged (does not have the CAP_SETUID capability in its
              user namespace) and euid does not match the current real
              user ID, current effective user ID, or current saved set-
              user-ID.

              In the case of setegid(): the calling process is not
              privileged (does not have the CAP_SETGID capability in its
              user namespace) and egid does not match the current real
              group ID, current effective group ID, or current saved
              set-group-ID.

VERSIONS         top

       Setting the effective user (group) ID to the saved set-user-ID
       (saved set-group-ID) is possible since Linux 1.1.37 (1.1.38).  On
       an arbitrary system one should check _POSIX_SAVED_IDS.

       Under glibc 2.0, seteuid(euid) is equivalent to setreuid(-1,
       euid) and hence may change the saved set-user-ID.  Under glibc
       2.1 and later, it is equivalent to setresuid(-1, euid, -1) and
       hence does not change the saved set-user-ID.  Analogous remarks
       hold for setegid(), with the difference that the change in
       implementation from setregid(-1, egid) to setresgid(-1, egid, -1)
       occurred in glibc 2.2 or 2.3 (depending on the hardware
       architecture).

       According to POSIX.1, seteuid() (setegid()) need not permit euid
       (egid) to be the same value as the current effective user (group)
       ID, and some implementations do not permit this.

   C library/kernel differences
       On Linux, seteuid() and setegid() are implemented as library
       functions that call, respectively, setresuid(2) and setresgid(2).

STANDARDS         top

       POSIX.1-2008.

HISTORY         top

       POSIX.1-2001, 4.3BSD.

SEE ALSO         top

       geteuid(2), setresuid(2), setreuid(2), setuid(2),
       capabilities(7), credentials(7), user_namespaces(7)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
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Linux man-pages 6.9.1          2024-05-02                     seteuid(2)

Pages that refer to this page: pmdaproc(1)setgid(2)setreuid(2)setuid(2)proc_sys_fs(5)credentials(7)nptl(7)pthreads(7)