SETUID(2)						     Linux Programmer's Manual							 SETUID(2)

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 calling process is privileged (more precisely: if the process has the
       CAP_SETUID capability in its user namespace), 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 man-
       ner.

       If the user is root or the program is set-user-ID-root, special care must be taken: setuid() 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.

CONFORMING TO

       POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, SVr4.  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.

   C library/kernel differences
       At the kernel level, user IDs and group IDs are a per-thread attribute.	However, POSIX requires that all threads in a  process	share  the
       same  credentials.   The NPTL threading implementation handles the POSIX requirements by providing wrapper functions for the various system
       calls that change process UIDs and GIDs.  These wrapper functions (including the one for  setuid())  employ  a  signal-based  technique	to
       ensure  that  when one thread changes credentials, all of the other threads in the process also change their credentials.  For details, see
       nptl(7).

SEE ALSO

       getuid(2), seteuid(2), setfsuid(2), setreuid(2), capabilities(7), credentials(7), user_namespaces(7)

COLOPHON

       This page is part of release 4.15 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 https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

Linux								    2017-09-15								 SETUID(2)