Talk:chroot

Pronunciation

What is the pronunciation of "chroot"? Chi-root? Che-root? Or Schrute (as in Dwight)? Should the correct pronunciation be added to the article? 95.89.148.210 (talk) 15:38, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I would have pronounced c-h-root /si:eɪʧ·ɹut/ but I heard a course (read by a non-technical narrator) pronounced as one syllable /ʧɹut/. Please someone add the most common pronunciation. Lubrom (talk) 21:19, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree that this article should begin with the correct pronunciation. Saying the first two letters separately is one way, but I am not convinced it is the correct way. Making it sound like a type of cigar is also sounding a bit odd to me. Someone must know for sure. - KitchM (talk) 05:28, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

At work everyone seems to just pronounce it "changeroot"; if such an alternative is not usable I'd go for Lubrom's solution of "see-age-root". l0b0 (talk) 07:48, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

chroouid

This article could perhaps also discuss chrootuid(1). See the README and Wietse Venema's page of tools and papers. --Vinsci 08:08, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Slashdot...

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/27/2256235&from=rss

The article right-out contradicted the discussion there. It has since been changed, but now it doesn't really make sense anymore. Shinobu 12:16, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Errors

Further to Gerbrant|Shinobu's comment, the present Wikipedia article is in error, or at least oversimplifying, to say "The chroot mechanism itself is not secure against intentional tampering. On POSIX-compliant systems, for example, chroot contexts do not stack properly and chrooted programs may perform a second chroot to break out." The referenced "second chroot" link itself [1] points out that a chroot jail is only insecure if the user running in the chroot jail is root. It specifically points out that proper usage is to run as non-root user in the chroot jail, and then the referenced exploit cannot be used. Certainly no technique is absolute proof against all code bug based exploits, but a chroot jail is a valuable security tool. To claim otherwise is revisionist, and the claimant would have to explain away the fact that such popular and well regarded linux server distros as Red Hat / Fedora run named in a chroot jail specifically for security reasons. Finally, the claim that chroot was originally devised for purposes other than as a security tool may be presumed to be true, but that hardly means that it cannot be used as one. Fnj2 15:37, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Portage

Would be interesting to list Gentoo's Portage in chroot uses since every single instalation in Portage involves a compilation in chroot.--201.80.139.28 (talk) 10:14, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Longer than the man page

This article is longer than man-page of chroot. Nice work. 88.64.1.142 (talk) 21:07, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

What is making an article longer than its man page relevant to? -- k.p —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.211.239.184 (talk) 13:03, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

huh???

There is something extremely wrong with this "sentence": "A program that is re-rooted to another directory cannot access or name files outside that directory, called a "chroot jail" or (less commonly) a "chroot prison"." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.136.214.96 (talk) 00:37, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I have tried to improve that sentence. Is is better now? — Tobias Bergemann (talk) 07:37, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The the term "re-rooted" doesn't have a common definition. "Redirected" does but means something different, I'm guessing. For "re-rooted", if someone is "rooted" this means or imnplies it is stuck there (as in the root of a plant) or is associated with that place. So, "re-rooted" merely implies it was moved. In -ix OSes, "root" refers either to an account or to the start (top) of the directory tree. "Re-rooted" has no clear meaning in this context.

To "improve" the sentence, either replace or define "re-rooted". WIthin the context of chroot, the way it is written is not (technically) different from being a word definition that uses itself in the definition. This is an unacceptable practice.

-- kernel.package (from a remote location)

Limitations

The text reads, "For a chrooted program to successfully start, the chroot directory must be populated with a minimum set of these files. This can make chroot difficult to use as a general sandboxing mechanism." Since this is an encyclopedic entry and is intended to be non-biased, the second sentence should be removed because it isn't helpful to understanding chroot. Since the chroot article is supposed to be encyclopedic, encyclopedic information that identifies and explains the minimum files would be better than simply removing the editorial comment ("... difficult to use ...").

-- kernel.package (from a remote location) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.211.239.184 (talk) 13:01, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

broken link in references.

The link [2] in reference to is broken. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.235.180.145 (talk) 11:19, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Bill Joy did not invent chroot

This system call was present AT&T versions of Unix well before 1982. This citation should be changed to point to an AT&T version. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 135.245.8.3 (talk) 14:24, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, Research's UNIX V7 sources (usr/sys/sys/sysent.c dated May 7th, 1979) has an entry at position 61 for chroot(2); the fact is even noted under the article about V7...Antoinel (talk) 16:35, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

If you look at the github conversion of the FreeBSD svn conversion of the original SCCS tree, Bill Joy's addition of chroot was converting chroot from the old style to new style system call. It is present in V7 (see https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V7/usr/src/libc/sys/chroot.s) 32V (https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=32V/usr/src/libc/sys/chroot.s) and 3BSD (https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=3BSD/usr/src/libc/sys/chroot.s)

https://blog.dionresearch.com/2020/05/data-infrastructures-for-rest-of-us-iii.html and https://bsdimp.blogspot.com/2020/06/whither-chroot.html have varying degrees of analysis for the origin question. Updated the page to reflect this new source of information.

What it means

I suppose, someone who came to this topic to be a non specialist. Why not explain clearly what chroot means?

I suppose, either, that chroot is change root. Am I right? If yes, can someone, please, do this explanation? Thanks everybody. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.13.180.166 (talk) 16:54, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

i think the intro paragraph is unclear

I don't understand what is meant by "changes the apparent root directory" in the first sentence of this article and I think it could be worded in a way that the terms are explained a bit more. 96.38.189.49 (talk) 08:17, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

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"Graphical applications" section

This section seems pointless. Graphical applications don't have special chroot-related issues different from the issues applicable to other applications, so we might as well also have sections for "compilers in chroot," "spreadsheets in chroot," "games in chroot," and so on. 2607:FEA8:12A0:44D:0:0:0:E11E (talk) 16:04, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Uses: foreign architecture

chroot (combined with binfmt and static-linked userspace qemu) is also useful for running foreign binaries (such as armel on amd64). I find it especially useful for building embedded Linux environments for embedded systems, so I (or a script) can run the native packaging tools, grub, etc, inside the jail. 209.104.4.210 (talk) 17:02, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

"Fakeroot" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Fakeroot has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 June 10 § Fakeroot until a consensus is reached. Jay 💬 06:13, 10 June 2023 (UTC)