ADC Home > Reference Library > Reference > Mac OS X > Mac OS X Man Pages

 

This document is a Mac OS X manual page. Manual pages are a command-line technology for providing documentation. You can view these manual pages locally using the man(1) command. These manual pages come from many different sources, and thus, have a variety of writing styles.

For more information about the manual page format, see the manual page for manpages(5).



CHROOT(8)                 BSD System Manager's Manual                CHROOT(8)

NAME
     chroot -- change root directory

SYNOPSIS
     chroot [-u -user] [-g -group] [-G -group,group,...] newroot [command]

DESCRIPTION
     The chroot command changes its root directory to the supplied directory newroot and exec's command, if
     supplied, or an interactive copy of your shell.

     If the -u, -g or -G options are given, the user, group and group list of the process are set to these
     values after the chroot has taken place.  See setgid(2), setgroups(2), setuid(2), getgrnam(3) and
     getpwnam(3).

     Note, command or the shell are run as your real-user-id.

ENVIRONMENT
     The following environment variable is referenced by chroot:

     SHELL  If set, the string specified by SHELL is interpreted as the name of the shell to exec.  If the
            variable SHELL is not set, /bin/sh is used.

SEE ALSO
     chdir(2), chroot(2), environ(7)

HISTORY
     The chroot utility first appeared in 4.4BSD.

SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
     chroot should never be installed setuid root, as it would then be possible to exploit the program to
     gain root privileges.

4.3 Berkeley Distribution       October 6, 1998      4.3 Berkeley Distribution

Did this document help you?
Yes: Tell us what works for you.
It’s good, but: Report typos, inaccuracies, and so forth.
It wasn’t helpful: Tell us what would have helped.