PIVOT_ROOT(8)

👑 pivot_root — the manual, but make it make sense

okay bestie, so this is pivot_root from section 8 of the manual (System Administration), and it's literally the glow-up your filesystem has been waiting for 💅

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✨ NAME ✨

pivot_root — change the root filesystem 🌱

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

pivot_root new_root put_old

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so here's the tea: pivot_root moves the root file system of the current process into the directory put_old, and then makes new_root the brand new root file system. main character energy, fr fr. and because pivot_root(8) is literally just calling pivot_root(2), we're pointing you at the man page for the latter if you want the deeper lore 📖

heads up bestie: depending on how pivot_root is implemented, the root directory and the current working directory of whoever's calling it may or may not change. so yeah, it's giving it depends 🙈

here's a sequence for invoking pivot_root that works either way, assuming pivot_root and chroot are in the current PATH:

cd new_root
pivot_root . put_old
exec chroot . command

note that chroot must be available under the old root and under the new root, because pivot_root may or may not have implicitly changed the root directory of the shell. no cap.

also note that exec chroot changes the running executable — and that's necessary if you want the old root directory to be unmounted afterwards. periodt. and one more thing: standard input, output, and error may still point to a device on the old root file system, which keeps it busy 👀 they can easily be changed when invoking chroot (see below; and notice the absence of leading slashes, which is what makes it work whether pivot_root has changed the shell's root or not 🧚)

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💖 OPTIONS 💖

• -h, --help — shows you the help text and dips out ✌️
• -V, --version — shows you the version and dips out ✌️

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🌸 EXAMPLE 🌸

want to change the root file system to /dev/hda1 from an interactive shell? say less:

mount /dev/hda1 /new-root
cd /new-root
pivot_root . old-root
exec chroot . sh <dev/console >dev/console 2>&1
umount /old-root

and if you want to mount the new root file system over NFS from 10.0.0.1:/my_root and run init? we love a networked slay 🔥

ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1 up   # for portmap
# configure Ethernet or such
portmap   # for lockd (implicitly started by mount)
mount -o ro 10.0.0.1:/my_root /mnt
killall portmap   # portmap keeps old root busy
cd /mnt
pivot_root . old_root
exec chroot . sh -c 'umount /old_root; exec /sbin/init' \
  <dev/console >dev/console 2>&1

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

chroot(1), pivot_root(2), mount(8), switch_root(8), umount(8) — go read those too, iykyk 🫶

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💀 REPORTING BUGS 💀

found a bug? not me manifesting that 😭 for bug reports, use the issue tracker here: <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>.

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🌈 AVAILABILITY 🌈

the pivot_root command is part of the util-linux package, which you can download from the Linux Kernel Archive: <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>.

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and that's the whole page bestie, you ate 💅 this was util-linux 2.42.4, dated 2026-09-21, and it was iconic. go pivot something. mwah 🎀✨