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.\"	$NetBSD: chroot.2,v 1.25 2017/10/30 15:48:38 wiz Exp $
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.\"     @(#)chroot.2	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93
.\"
.Dd April 18, 2001
.Dt CHROOT 2
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm chroot ,
.Nm fchroot
.Nd change root directory
.Sh LIBRARY
.Lb libc
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.In unistd.h
.Ft int
.Fn chroot "const char *dirname"
.Ft int
.Fn fchroot "int fd"
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Fa dirname
is the address of the pathname of a directory, terminated by an ASCII NUL.
.Fn chroot
causes
.Fa dirname
to become the root directory,
that is, the starting point for path searches of pathnames
beginning with
.Ql / .
.Pp
In order for a directory to become the root directory
a process must have execute (search) access for that directory.
.Pp
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,
.Fn chroot
has no effect on the process's current directory.
.Pp
This call is restricted to the super-user.
.Pp
The
.Fn fchroot
function performs the same operation on an open directory file
known by the file descriptor
.Fa fd .
.Sh RETURN VALUES
Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned.
Otherwise, a value of \-1 is returned and
.Va errno
is set to indicate an error.
.Sh ERRORS
.Fn chroot
will fail and the root directory will be unchanged if:
.Bl -tag -width Er
.It Bq Er EACCES
Search permission is denied for any component of the path name.
.It Bq Er EFAULT
.Fa dirname
points outside the process's allocated address space.
.It Bq Er EIO
An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
.It Bq Er ELOOP
Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
.It Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG
A component of a pathname exceeded
.Brq Dv NAME_MAX
characters, or an entire path name exceeded
.Brq Dv PATH_MAX
characters.
.It Bq Er ENOENT
The named directory does not exist.
.It Bq Er ENOTDIR
A component of the path name is not a directory.
.It Bq Er EPERM
The effective user ID of the calling process is not the super-user.
.El
.Pp
.Fn fchroot
will fail and the root directory will be unchanged if:
.Bl -tag -width Er
.It Bq Er EACCES
Search permission is denied for the directory referenced
by the file descriptor.
.It Bq Er EBADF
The argument
.Fa fd
is not a valid file descriptor.
.It Bq Er EIO
An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
.It Bq Er ENOTDIR
The argument
.Fa fd
does not reference a directory.
.It Bq Er EPERM
The effective user ID of the calling process is not the super-user.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr chdir 2
.Sh STANDARDS
The
.Fn chroot
function conforms to
.St -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.
.Pp
.Fn chroot
was declared a legacy interface, and subsequently removed in
.St -p1003.1-2001 .
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Fn chroot
function call appeared in
.Bx 4.2 .
Working directory handling was changed in
.Nx 1.4
to prevent one way a process could use a second
.Fn chroot
call to a different directory to "escape" from the restricted subtree.
The
.Fn fchroot
function appeared in
.Nx 1.4 .