does chroot() require root privileges?

c linux root chroot
Karim Kouznetsov picture Karim Kouznetsov · Apr 13, 2013 · Viewed 8.3k times · Source

Everything is in the question. When I try to use chroot with "." or the complete pathname as argument, perror tells me "Operation not permitted". If the answer to my question is yes, is there another way to change root directory ? (Without barbarian methods using strcmp() / strncmp())

Thanks !

Answer

bash.d picture bash.d · Apr 13, 2013

chroot can only be used by root him/her/itself. And no, there won't be any other way without compromising security.

From Wikipedia

Only the root user can perform a chroot. This is intended to prevent users from putting a setuid program inside a specially crafted chroot jail (for example, with a fake /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow file) that would fool it into a privilege escalation.

See here for the article.

Related questions

Undefined reference to pthread_create in Linux

I picked up the following demo off the web from https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/pthreads/ #include <pthread.h> #include <stdio.h> #define NUM_THREADS 5 void *PrintHello(void *threadid) { long tid; tid = (long)threadid; printf("Hello …

Read More
Write to .txt file?

How can I write a little piece of text into a .txt file? I've been Googling for over 3-4 hours, but can't find out how to do it. fwrite(); has so many arguments, and I don't know how to use …

Read More
Easily measure elapsed time

I am trying to use time() to measure various points of my program. What I don't understand is why the values in the before and after are the same? I understand this is not the best way to profile my …

Read More