NAME

chroot − change root directory

SYNOPSIS

chroot(dirname)
char ∗dirname;

DESCRIPTION

Dirname is the address of the pathname of a directory, terminated by a null byte.  Chroot causes this directory to become the root directory, the starting point for path names beginning with “/”. 

In order for a directory to become the root directory a process must have execute (search) access to the directory. 

This call is restricted to the super-user. 

RETURN VALUE

Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned.  Otherwise, a value of −1 is returned and errno is set to indicate an error. 

ERRORS

Chroot will fail and the root directory will be unchanged if one or more of the following are true:

[ENOTDIR] A component of the path name is not a directory. 

[ENOENT] The pathname was too long. 

[EPERM] The argument contains a byte with the high-order bit set. 

[ENOENT] The named directory does not exist. 

[EACCES] Search permission is denied for any component of the path name. 

[EFAULT] Path points outside the process’s allocated address space. 

[ELOOP] Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname. 

[EIO] An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system. 

SEE ALSO

chdir(2)

4BSD