Linux manual pages Section 8  

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 and /sys 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

show help and exit

−V, −−version

show version number 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

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

AUTHORS

Peter Jones <[email protected]>
Jeremy Katz <[email protected]>
Karel Zak <[email protected]>

AVAILABILITY

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


  Karel Zak <kzakredhat.com>