NAME |SYNOPSIS |DESCRIPTION |RETURN VALUE |ERRORS |SEE ALSO |COLOPHON | |
setfilecon(3) SELinux API documentationsetfilecon(3)setfilecon, fsetfilecon, lsetfilecon - set SELinux security context of a file
#include <selinux/selinux.h>int setfilecon(const char *path, const char *con);int setfilecon_raw(const char *path, const char *con);int lsetfilecon(const char *path, const char *con);int lsetfilecon_raw(const char *path, const char *con);int fsetfilecon(intfd, const char *con);int fsetfilecon_raw(intfd, const char *con);
setfilecon() sets the security context of the file system object.lsetfilecon() is identical to setfilecon, except in the case of a symbolic link, where the link itself has it's context set, not the file that it refers to.fsetfilecon() is identical to setfilecon, only the open file pointed to by filedes (as returned byopen(2)) has it's context set in place of path. Since libselinux 3.4 a file opened viaO_PATH is supported.setfilecon_raw(),lsetfilecon_raw(), andfsetfilecon_raw() behave identically to their non-raw counterparts but do not perform context translation.
On success, zero is returned. On failure, -1 is returned anderrno is set appropriately.
If there is insufficient space remaining to store the extended attribute,errno is set to eitherENOSPC, orEDQUOTif quota enforcement was the cause. If extended attributes are not supported by the filesystem, or are disabled,errno is set toENOTSUP. The errors documented for thestat(2) system call are also applicable here.
selinux(3),freecon(3),getfilecon(3),setfscreatecon(3)
This page is part of theselinux (Security-Enhanced Linux user- space libraries and tools) project. Information about the project can be found at ⟨https://github.com/SELinuxProject/selinux/wiki⟩. If you have a bug report for this manual page, see ⟨https://github.com/SELinuxProject/selinux/wiki/Contributing⟩. This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository ⟨https://github.com/SELinuxProject/selinux⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the repository was 2025-08-04.) If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which isnot part of the original manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.orgrussell@coker.com.au 1 January 2004setfilecon(3)Pages that refer to this page:getfilecon(3), matchpathcon(3), matchpathcon_checkmatches(3), selinux_lsetfilecon_default(3), set_matchpathcon_flags(3)
HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 byMichael Kerrisk, author ofThe Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depthLinux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, lookhere. Hosting byjambit GmbH. | ![]() |