1setresuid(2)                  System Calls Manual                 setresuid(2)
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NAME

6       setresuid, setresgid - set real, effective, and saved user or group ID
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LIBRARY

9       Standard C library (libc, -lc)
10

SYNOPSIS

12       #define _GNU_SOURCE         /* See feature_test_macros(7) */
13       #include <unistd.h>
14
15       int setresuid(uid_t ruid, uid_t euid, uid_t suid);
16       int setresgid(gid_t rgid, gid_t egid, gid_t sgid);
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DESCRIPTION

19       setresuid() sets the real user ID, the effective user ID, and the saved
20       set-user-ID of the calling process.
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22       An unprivileged process may change its real  UID,  effective  UID,  and
23       saved  set-user-ID,  each  to one of: the current real UID, the current
24       effective UID, or the current saved set-user-ID.
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26       A privileged process (on Linux, one having the  CAP_SETUID  capability)
27       may set its real UID, effective UID, and saved set-user-ID to arbitrary
28       values.
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30       If one of the arguments equals  -1,  the  corresponding  value  is  not
31       changed.
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33       Regardless of what changes are made to the real UID, effective UID, and
34       saved set-user-ID, the filesystem UID is always set to the  same  value
35       as the (possibly new) effective UID.
36
37       Completely  analogously,  setresgid() sets the real GID, effective GID,
38       and saved set-group-ID of the calling process (and always modifies  the
39       filesystem  GID to be the same as the effective GID), with the same re‐
40       strictions for unprivileged processes.
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RETURN VALUE

43       On success, zero is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and  errno  is
44       set to indicate the error.
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46       Note:  there  are cases where setresuid() can fail even when the caller
47       is UID 0; it is a grave security error to omit checking for  a  failure
48       return from setresuid().
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ERRORS

51       EAGAIN The call would change the caller's real UID (i.e., ruid does not
52              match the caller's real UID), but there was a temporary  failure
53              allocating the necessary kernel data structures.
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55       EAGAIN ruid  does  not  match the caller's real UID and this call would
56              bring the number of processes belonging to the real user ID ruid
57              over the caller's RLIMIT_NPROC resource limit.  Since Linux 3.1,
58              this error case no longer occurs (but robust applications should
59              check  for  this  error);  see  the description of EAGAIN in ex‐
60              ecve(2).
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62       EINVAL One or more of the target user or group IDs is not valid in this
63              user namespace.
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65       EPERM  The  calling  process is not privileged (did not have the neces‐
66              sary capability in its user namespace) and tried to  change  the
67              IDs to values that are not permitted.  For setresuid(), the nec‐
68              essary capability is CAP_SETUID; for setresgid(), it is CAP_SET‐
69              GID.
70

VERSIONS

72   C library/kernel differences
73       At the kernel level, user IDs and group IDs are a per-thread attribute.
74       However, POSIX requires that all threads in a process  share  the  same
75       credentials.   The  NPTL threading implementation handles the POSIX re‐
76       quirements by providing wrapper functions for the various system  calls
77       that  change process UIDs and GIDs.  These wrapper functions (including
78       those for setresuid() and setresgid()) employ a signal-based  technique
79       to  ensure  that  when one thread changes credentials, all of the other
80       threads in the process also change their credentials.  For details, see
81       nptl(7).
82

STANDARDS

84       None.
85

HISTORY

87       Linux 2.1.44, glibc 2.3.2.  HP-UX, FreeBSD.
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89       The  original  Linux setresuid() and setresgid() system calls supported
90       only 16-bit user and group IDs.  Subsequently, Linux 2.4  added  setre‐
91       suid32()  and  setresgid32(),  supporting 32-bit IDs.  The glibc setre‐
92       suid() and setresgid() wrapper functions transparently  deal  with  the
93       variations across kernel versions.
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SEE ALSO

96       getresuid(2),  getuid(2),  setfsgid(2),  setfsuid(2),  setreuid(2), se‐
97       tuid(2), capabilities(7), credentials(7), user_namespaces(7)
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101Linux man-pages 6.05              2023-03-30                      setresuid(2)
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