SETUID
Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (2)
Updated: 2017-09-15
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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 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.
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 4.13 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/.
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- RETURN VALUE
-
- ERRORS
-
- CONFORMING TO
-
- NOTES
-
- C library/kernel differences
-
- SEE ALSO
-
- COLOPHON
-
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