NAME

chroot_safe - Chroot dynamically linked applications in a sane and safe manner

SYNOPSIS

chroot_safe user chroot_directory application [arguments...]

DESCRIPTION

chroot_safe is a tool to chroot any application in a safe and sane manner without requring binaries, shared libraries etc within the chroot or any support from the application. Works with any dynamically linked application.

Normally when you chroot applications not having native support for chroot there is a number of obstacles to overcome

1.: The binary must be within the chroot jail
2.: All libraries used by the binary must be within the chroot jail
3.: chroot does not drop root privileges
4.: su nobody -c does not chroot

Shortcomings 3 & 4 can be addressed by writing a small tool replacing chroot, but you still have limitations 1 & 2.

chroot_safe addresses all four of these shortcomings by at runtime linking instrument the application to perform a full chroot and drop all root privileges just after dynamic linking has completed but before the application as such is started. This is done via a small LD_PRELOAD stub and a shell wrapper giving instructions on how to chroot.

EXAMPLES

Here is a silly example demonstrating the power of this application: chroot "ls -l" to /tmp in a safe manner without needing to prepare anything in /tmp

: chroot_safe nobody /tmp ls -l

Note: This example does not work on FreeBSD or other platforms where ls is statically linked.

You can also find a howto chroot an anonymous CVS server online at the chroot_safe website

NOTES

This application utilizes some shared library loading tricks to instrument the application with the required chroot hooks. Because of this it won't work on statically linked applications.

If there is any problem chrooting the application an error message is printed on stderr, and execution of the application is terminated.

Root privileges are required to chroot applications.

For details on the inner workings see the comments in the source.

AUTHOR

Henrik Nordstrom <hno@marasystems.com>

REPORTING BUGS

Send bug fixes or improvements to the author