1setreuid(2) System Calls Manual setreuid(2)
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6 setreuid, setregid - set real and/or effective user or group ID
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9 Standard C library (libc, -lc)
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12 #include <unistd.h>
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14 int setreuid(uid_t ruid, uid_t euid);
15 int setregid(gid_t rgid, gid_t egid);
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17 Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
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19 setreuid(), setregid():
20 _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500
21 || /* Since glibc 2.19: */ _DEFAULT_SOURCE
22 || /* glibc <= 2.19: */ _BSD_SOURCE
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25 setreuid() sets real and effective user IDs of the calling process.
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27 Supplying a value of -1 for either the real or effective user ID forces
28 the system to leave that ID unchanged.
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30 Unprivileged processes may only set the effective user ID to the real
31 user ID, the effective user ID, or the saved set-user-ID.
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33 Unprivileged users may only set the real user ID to the real user ID or
34 the effective user ID.
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36 If the real user ID is set (i.e., ruid is not -1) or the effective user
37 ID is set to a value not equal to the previous real user ID, the saved
38 set-user-ID will be set to the new effective user ID.
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40 Completely analogously, setregid() sets real and effective group ID's
41 of the calling process, and all of the above holds with "group" instead
42 of "user".
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45 On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is
46 set to indicate the error.
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48 Note: there are cases where setreuid() can fail even when the caller is
49 UID 0; it is a grave security error to omit checking for a failure re‐
50 turn from setreuid().
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53 EAGAIN The call would change the caller's real UID (i.e., ruid does not
54 match the caller's real UID), but there was a temporary failure
55 allocating the necessary kernel data structures.
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57 EAGAIN ruid does not match the caller's real UID and this call would
58 bring the number of processes belonging to the real user ID ruid
59 over the caller's RLIMIT_NPROC resource limit. Since Linux 3.1,
60 this error case no longer occurs (but robust applications should
61 check for this error); see the description of EAGAIN in ex‐
62 ecve(2).
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64 EINVAL One or more of the target user or group IDs is not valid in this
65 user namespace.
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67 EPERM The calling process is not privileged (on Linux, does not have
68 the necessary capability in its user namespace: CAP_SETUID in
69 the case of setreuid(), or CAP_SETGID in the case of setregid())
70 and a change other than (i) swapping the effective user (group)
71 ID with the real user (group) ID, or (ii) setting one to the
72 value of the other or (iii) setting the effective user (group)
73 ID to the value of the saved set-user-ID (saved set-group-ID)
74 was specified.
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77 POS