 Example usage of chroot in Raspberry Pi OS running an interactive shell within a special root directory | |
| Original author(s) | Bill Joy, AT&T Bell Laboratories |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Various open-source and commercial developers |
| Initial release | 1979 |
| Operating system | Unix, Unix-like, Plan 9, Inferno |
| Platform | Cross-platform |
| Type | Command |
chroot is an operation on Unix and Unix-like operating systems that changes the apparent root directory for the current running process and its children. A program that is run in such a modified environment cannot name (and therefore normally cannot access) files outside the designated directory tree. The term "chroot" may refer to the chroot(2) system call or the chroot(8) wrapper program. The modified environment is called a chroot jail.