pam_chroot(8)

pam_chroot8

Chroot pam module

Usage

[service-name] module-type control-flag pam_chroot [arguments]

Overview

The chroot service module for PAM chroots users into either a predetermined directory or one derived from their home directory. If a user's home directory as specified in the passwd structure returned by getpwnam(3) contains the string “/./”, the portion of the directory name to the left of that string is used as the chroot directory, and the portion to the right will be the current working directory inside the chroot tree. Otherwise, the directories specified by the dir and cwd options (see below) are used.

also_root

Do not hold user ID 0 exempt from the chroot requirement.

always

Report a failure if a chroot directory could not be derived from the user's home directory, and the dir option was not specified.

cwd=directory

Specify the directory to chdir(2) into after a successful chroot(2) call.

dir=directory

Specify the chroot directory to use if one could not be derived from the user's home directory.

Releases

55 releases since FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE; the text changed 35 times.

  1. 5.1–5.2.1
  2. 5.3–6.3
  3. 6.4
  4. 7.0
  5. 7.1
  6. 7.2
  7. 7.3
  8. 7.4
  9. 8.0
  10. 8.1
  11. 8.2
  12. 8.3
  13. 8.4
  14. 9.0
  15. 9.1
  16. 9.2
  17. 9.3
  18. 10.0
  19. 10.1
  20. 10.2
  21. 10.3
  22. 10.4
  23. 11.0
  24. 11.1
  25. 11.2
  26. 11.3
  27. 11.4
  28. 12.0
  29. 12.1
  30. 12.2
  31. 12.3
  32. 12.4
  33. 13.0–13.2
  34. 13.3–13.5
  35. 14.0–14.2
  36. 14.3–16.0

Authors

The pam_chroot module and this manual page were developed for the FreeBSD Project by ThinkSec AS and NAI Labs, the Security Research Division of Network Associates, Inc. under DARPA/SPAWAR contract N66001-01-C-8035 (“CBOSS”), as part of the DARPA CHATS research program.

From base 16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79 in FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.