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What is Chroot?

A mechanism that changes the apparent root directory for a process and its children, creating an isolated filesystem view.

Chroot (change root) creates a restricted environment where a process sees a different directory as the root (/). This provides basic filesystem isolation — the process cannot access files outside its chroot jail.

Uses include system recovery (chroot into a broken system from a live USB), build environments, and basic security isolation. However, chroot is not a security boundary — privileged processes can escape. Containers (Docker) provide stronger isolation.

Related Terms

ACL (Access Control List)
An extension to standard Linux file permissions that allows setting fine-grained access rights for specific users and groups beyond owner/group/other.
Systemd
A system and service manager for Linux that initializes the system and manages services, logging, and more.
Firewalld
A dynamic firewall management tool for Linux that provides a D-Bus interface for managing firewall rules with zones.
Ulimit
A command that sets or displays resource limits for user processes, such as maximum open files or memory usage.
Iptables
The traditional Linux firewall tool that filters network packets using configurable chains of rules organized in tables.
File Permissions
A security mechanism that controls who can read, write, or execute files and directories in Unix-like systems.
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