1. pivot_root can/should be used together with chroot
pivot_root new_root put_old
pivot_root moves the root file system of the current process to the
directory put_old and makes new_root the new root file system.
cd new_root
pivot_root . old-root
exec chroot . command umount /old-root
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.
2. switch_root newroot init [arg...]
switch_root moves already mounted /proc, /dev and /sys to newroot and
makes newroot the new root filesystem and starts init process. switch_root is typically used with initramfs. WARNING: switch_root removes recursively all files and directories on
the current root filesystem.
The following shell script fragment demonstrates how to use switch_root:
# First, find and mount the new filesystem.
mkdir /newroot
mount /dev/whatever /newroot # Unmount everything else you've attached to rootfs. (Moving the filesystems
# into newroot is something useful to do with them.) mount --move /sys /newroot/sys
mount --move /proc /newroot/proc
mount --move /dev /newroot/dev # Now switch to the new filesystem, and run /sbin/init out of it. Don't
# forget the "exec" here, because you want the new init program to inherit
# PID 1. exec switch_root /newroot /sbin/init
