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System Administration Commandschroot(1M)


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,

 
chroot newroot command >x

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

 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.

ATTRIBUTES

 

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

ATTRIBUTE TYPEATTRIBUTE VALUE
AvailabilitySUNWcsu

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 5.9Go To TopLast Changed 20 Mar 1998

 
      
      
Copyright 2002 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Use is subject to license terms.