Copyright (c) 1983 Regents of the University of California.
All rights reserved. The Berkeley software License Agreement
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@(#)chroot.2 5.1 (Berkeley) 05/15/85

C 5 chroot - change root directory

chroot(dirname)
char *dirname;

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.

Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned. Otherwise, a value of -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate an error. Chroot will fail and the root directory will be unchanged if one or more of the following are true:

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

15 [ENOENT] The pathname was too long.

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

15 [ENOENT] The named directory does not exist.

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

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

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

chdir(2)