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SWITCH_ROOT

Section: System Administration (8)
Updated: June 2009
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NAME

switch_root - switch to another filesystem as the root of the mount tree  

SYNOPSIS

switch_root [-hV]

switch_root newroot init [arg...]  

DESCRIPTION

switch_root moves already mounted /proc, /dev, /sys and /run to newroot and makes newroot the new root filesystem and starts init process.

WARNING: switch_root removes recursively all files and directories on the current root filesystem.

 

OPTIONS

-h, --help
Display help text and exit.
-V, --version
Display version information and exit.

 

RETURN VALUE

switch_root returns 0 on success and 1 on failure.

 

NOTES

switch_root will fail to function if newroot is not the root of a mount. If you want to switch root into a directory that does not meet this requirement then you can first use a bind-mounting trick to turn any directory into a mount point:

mount --bind $DIR $DIR

 

SEE ALSO

chroot(2), init(8), mkinitrd(8), mount(8)  

AUTHORS

Peter Jones <pjones@redhat.com>
Jeremy Katz <katzj@redhat.com>
Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>
 

AVAILABILITY

The switch_root command is part of the util-linux package and is available from https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.


 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
OPTIONS
RETURN VALUE
NOTES
SEE ALSO
AUTHORS
AVAILABILITY