switch_root(8) — Linux manual page

SWITCH_ROOT(8)            System Administration            SWITCH_ROOT(8)

NAME         top

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

SYNOPSIS         top

       switch_root [-hV]

       switch_root newroot init [arg...]

DESCRIPTION         top

       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         top

       -h, --help
           Display help text and exit.

       -V, --version
           Display version and exit.

EXIT STATUS         top

       switch_root returns 1 on failure, it never returns on success.

NOTES         top

       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

AUTHORS         top

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

SEE ALSO         top

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

REPORTING BUGS         top

       For bug reports, use the issue tracker
       <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>.

AVAILABILITY         top

       The switch_root command is part of the util-linux package which
       can be downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
       <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>. This page is
       part of the util-linux (a random collection of Linux utilities)
       project. Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩. If you have a
       bug report for this manual page, send it to
       util-linux@vger.kernel.org. This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
       2025-08-11. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that
       was found in the repository was 2025-08-05.) If you discover any
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       or you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
       COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a
       mail to man-pages@man7.org

util-linux 2.42-start-521-ec46  2025-01-16                 SWITCH_ROOT(8)

Pages that refer to this page: chroot(2),  pivot_root(2),  namespaces(7),  pid_namespaces(7),  pivot_root(8)

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