switch_root(8)

switch_root8

Switch to another filesystem as the root of the mount tree

Usage

switch_root [-hV]

switch_root newroot init [arg ...]

Overview

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

-h, --help

Display help text and exit.

-V, --version

Display version and exit.

Exit status

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

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

Releases

9 releases since Debian 6.0 (Squeeze); the text changed 8 times.

  1. 6.0
  2. 7
  3. 8
  4. 9
  5. 10
  6. 11
  7. 12
  8. 13
  9. Arch

Authors

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

Reporting bugs

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

Availability

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/>.

From util-linux 2.42.4-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.