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PIVOT_ROOT(2) Linux Programmer's Manual PIVOT_ROOT(2)
pivot_root - change the root file system
int pivot_root(const char *new_root, const char *put_old);
pivot_root() moves the root file system of the calling process to the
directory put_old and makes new_root the new root file system of the calling
process.
The typical use of pivot_root() is during system startup, when the system
mounts a temporary root file system (e.g., an initrd), then mounts the real
root file system, and eventually turns the latter into the current root of all
relevant processes or threads.
pivot_root() may or may not change the current root and the current working
directory of any processes or threads which use the old root directory. The
caller of pivot_root() must ensure that processes with root or current working
directory at the old root operate correctly in either case. An easy way to
ensure this is to change their root and current working directory to new_root
before invoking pivot_root().
The paragraph above is intentionally vague because the implementation of
pivot_root() may change in the future. At the time of writing, pivot_root()
changes root and current working directory of each process or thread to
new_root if they point to the old root directory. This is necessary in order
to prevent kernel threads from keeping the old root directory busy with their
root and current working directory, even if they never access the file system
in any way. In the future, there may be a mechanism for kernel threads to
explicitly relinquish any access to the file system, such that this fairly
intrusive mechanism can be removed from pivot_root().
Note that this also applies to the calling process: pivot_root() may or may
not affect its current working directory. It is therefore recommended to call
chdir("/") immediately after pivot_root().
The following restrictions apply to new_root and put_old:
- They must be directories.
- new_root and put_old must not be on the same file system as the current
root.
- put_old must be underneath new_root, that is, adding a nonzero number of
/.. to the string pointed to by put_old must yield the same directory as
new_root.
- No other file system may be mounted on put_old.
See also pivot_root(8) for additional usage examples.
If the current root is not a mount point (e.g., after chroot(2) or
pivot_root(), see also below), not the old root directory, but the mount point
of that file system is mounted on put_old.
new_root does not have to be a mount point. In this case, /proc/mounts will
show the mount point of the file system containing new_root as root (/).
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set
appropriately.
pivot_root() may return (in errno) any of the errors returned by stat(2).
Additionally, it may return:
EBUSY new_root or put_old are on the current root file system, or a file
system is already mounted on put_old.
EINVAL put_old is not underneath new_root.
ENOTDIR
new_root or put_old is not a directory.
EPERM The calling process does not have the CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability.
pivot_root() was introduced in Linux 2.3.41.
pivot_root() is Linux-specific and hence is not portable.
Glibc does not provide a wrapper for this system call; call it using
syscall(2).
pivot_root() should not have to change root and current working directory of
all other processes in the system.
Some of the more obscure uses of pivot_root() may quickly lead to insanity.
chdir(2), chroot(2), stat(2), initrd(4), pivot_root(8)
This page is part of release 3.32 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found
at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Linux 2007-06-01 PIVOT_ROOT(2)
HTML rendering created 2010-12-03 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface