CHROOT(2) — SYSTEM CALLS

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 makes this directory become the root directory, the starting point for path names beginning with “/”. This root directory setting is inherited across execve(2) and by all children of this process created with fork(2) calls.

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:

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

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

[ENAMETOOLONG]
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.

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