chroot(1M)

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUES | EXAMPLES | ATTRIBUTES | SEE ALSO | NOTES

NAME

chroot– change root directory for a command

SYNOPSIS

/usr/sbin/chroot newroot command

DESCRIPTION

The chroot utility causes command to be executed relative to newroot. The meaning of any initial slashes ( | ) in the path names is changed to newroot for command and any of its child processes. Upon execution, the initial working directory is newroot.

Notice that redirecting the output of command to a file,

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chroot newroot command >x

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will create the file x relative to the original root of command, not the new one.

The new root path name is always relative to the current root. Even if a chroot is currently in effect, the newroot argument is relative to the current root of the running process.

This command can be run only by the super-user.

RETURN VALUES

The exit status of chroot is the return value of command.

EXAMPLES

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Example 1 Using the chroot utility.




The chroot utility provides an easy way to extract tar files (see tar(1)) written with absolute filenames to a different location:

example# cp /usr/sbin/static/tar /tmp example# dd if=/dev/nrst0 | chroot /tmp tar xvf -

Note that tar is statically linked, so it is not necessary to copy any shared libraries to the newroot filesystem.

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ATTRIBUTES

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

ATTRIBUTE TYPE	ATTRIBUTE VALUE
Availability	SUNWcsu

SEE ALSO

cd(1), tar(1), chroot(2), ttyname(3C), attributes(5)

NOTES

Exercise extreme caution when referencing device files in the new root file system.

References by routines such as ttyname(3C) to stdin, stdout, and stderr will find that the device associated with the file descriptor is unknown after chroot is run.

SunOS 5.9  Last Revised 20 Mar 1998

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUES | EXAMPLES | ATTRIBUTES | SEE ALSO | NOTES