C, chown, chmod, symlinks and dereferencing

Xyne · 2013-02-13 21:48:29

In C, if you want to stat a symlink you can use the non-dereferencing version of stat, namely lstat.
Is there a non-dereferencing version of the chown system call (i.e. lchown?).
The desired behavior is that of "chmod -h..." from the command-line. If no one has an answer then I will dig through the source of chmod to determine how it works.

What about chmod? Is it even possible to change the permission mode of a symlink? There does not seem to be any non-dereferencing options for the command-line utility.

Thanks.

kaszak696 · 2013-02-13 21:59:28

man 2 chown shows that there indeed is a lchown system call. Manual for chmod doesn't mention lchmod, it seems to be declared in stat.h, but it's inside __USE_BSD define, not sure how that works. Some info about this: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html//bug- … 00268.html

Last edited by kaszak696 (2013-02-13 22:04:19)

AaronBP · 2013-02-13 22:05:26

Is there a non-dereferencing version of the chown system call (i.e. lchown?).

Yep, looks that way. There's a man page for it.

lchmod looks like a BSD only thing, though.

EDIT:
Ah, guy above me found it first.

Last edited by AaronBP (2013-02-13 22:07:05)

progandy · 2013-02-13 22:57:17

kaszak696 wrote:

man 2 chown shows that there indeed is a lchown system call. Manual for chmod doesn't mention lchmod, it seems to be declared in stat.h, but it's inside __USE_BSD define, not sure how that works. Some info about this: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html//bug- … 00268.html

lchmod ist defined in unistd.h and is available on BSD as well as Linux (part of X/Open XA UNIX extensions)

Xyne · 2013-02-13 23:12:17

Thanks. I usually refer to the GNU C library documentation and there is no mention of lchown there.

Eric Blake, in the linked post, wrote:

Right now, gnulib has an lchmod replacement which always calls chmod; this will do the wrong thing if it is ever called on a symlink, but is right for everything else.

(emphasis mine)

Wow.

edit: formatting

Last edited by Xyne (2013-02-13 23:12:41)

Trent · 2013-02-15 14:56:01

Lol. Seems like it would be better to omit lchmod entirely than to provide a version that does the wrong thing in the only possible situation where one might need it.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-02-13 21:48:29

C, chown, chmod, symlinks and dereferencing

#2 2013-02-13 21:59:28

Re: C, chown, chmod, symlinks and dereferencing

#3 2013-02-13 22:05:26

Re: C, chown, chmod, symlinks and dereferencing

#4 2013-02-13 22:57:17

Re: C, chown, chmod, symlinks and dereferencing

#5 2013-02-13 23:12:17

Re: C, chown, chmod, symlinks and dereferencing

#6 2013-02-15 14:56:01

Re: C, chown, chmod, symlinks and dereferencing

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