NAME
chroot
, fchroot
— change root
directory
LIBRARY
library “libc”
SYNOPSIS
#include
<unistd.h>
int
chroot
(const
char *dirname);
int
fchroot
(int
fd);
DESCRIPTION
dirname is the address of the pathname of a directory, terminated by an ASCII NUL.chroot
()
causes dirname to become the root directory, that is,
the starting point for path searches of pathnames beginning with
‘/
’.
In order for a directory to become the root directory a process must have execute (search) access for that directory.
If the current working directory is not at or under
the new root directory, it is silently set to the new root directory. It
should be noted that, on most other systems,
chroot
()
has no effect on the process's current directory.
This call is restricted to the super-user.
The
fchroot
()
function performs the same operation on an open directory file known by the
file descriptor fd.
RETURN VALUES
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:
- [
EACCES
] - Search permission is denied for any component of the path name.
- [
EFAULT
] - dirname points outside the process's allocated address space.
- [
EIO
] - An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
- [
ELOOP
] - Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
- [
ENAMETOOLONG
] - A component of a pathname exceeded {
NAME_MAX
} characters, or an entire path name exceeded {PATH_MAX
} characters. - [
ENOENT
] - The named directory does not exist.
- [
ENOTDIR
] - A component of the path name is not a directory.
- [
EPERM
] - The effective user ID of the calling process is not the super-user.
fchroot
() will fail and the root directory
will be unchanged if:
- [
EACCES
] - Search permission is denied for the directory referenced by the file descriptor.
- [
EBADF
] - The argument fd is not a valid file descriptor.
- [
EIO
] - An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
- [
ENOTDIR
] - The argument fd does not reference a directory.
- [
EPERM
] - The effective user ID of the calling process is not the super-user.
SEE ALSO
STANDARDS
The chroot
() function conforms to
X/Open System Interfaces and Headers Issue 5
(“XSH5”), with the restriction that the calling
process' working directory must be at or under the new root directory.
Otherwise, the working directory is silently set to the new root directory;
this is an extension to the standard.
chroot
() was declared a legacy interface,
and subsequently removed in IEEE Std 1003.1-2001
(“POSIX.1”).
HISTORY
The chroot
() function call appeared in
4.2BSD. Working directory handling was changed in
NetBSD 1.4 to prevent one way a process could use a
second chroot
() call to a different directory to
"escape" from the restricted subtree. The
fchroot
() function appeared in
NetBSD 1.4.