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I would like to chroot to another rootfs and unmount the former one so, after mounting a SD card containing a rootfs (on /mnt/disk/) and killing almost every process, I tried to run:

umount /tmp
mount --move /proc /mnt/disk/proc
mount --move /sys /mnt/disk/sys

and then, mount --move /dev /mnt/disk/dev which fails with the error message:

mount: mounting /dev/ on /mnt/disk/dev failed: No such file or directory

Some more information:

  • I also tried umount /dev giving

    umount: can't umount /dev/: Invalid argument
    # (same error with /dev/root)

  • The former rootfs is on a NAND partition (JFFS2)

  • /proc/cmdline contains:

    root=/dev/mtdblock3

  • mount -t jffs2 /dev/mtdblock3 /mnt/disk/dev works (mounts the former root) Could it be related to a filesystem conflict between the SD card and the root partition ?

  • cat /mnt/disk/proc/mounts

    rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0
    /dev/root / jffs2 rw 0 0
    /proc /mnt/disk/proc proc rw 0 0
    /sys /mnt/disk/sys sysfs rw 0 0
    /dev/mmcblk0p0 /mnt/disk ext2 rw,errors=continue 0 0

  • Kernel: 2.6.29.4

  • busybox: 1.16.1
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1 Answer 1

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# cat /mnt/disk/proc/mounts
rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0
/dev/root / jffs2 rw 0 0
/proc /mnt/disk/proc proc rw 0 0
/sys /mnt/disk/sys sysfs rw 0 0
/dev/mmcblk0p0 /mnt/disk ext2 rw,errors=continue 0 0

umount /dev: Invalid argument

mount: mounting /dev/ on /mnt/disk/dev failed: No such file or directory

There is no filesystem mounted at /dev, therefore you cannot unmount it or move it. That is what these error messages mean. (Possibly busybox mount uses more generic error messages than its heavyweight counterpart).

If the target /dev/ isn't going to have the device nodes you need, hopefully you have a MAKEDEV in there you can use.

If you try copying them from the original /dev/ using cp -a, there's a risk that the UIDs will not match the target rootfs, and hence permissions won't work as desired for non-root users. (Less secure or "so secure it doesn't work").

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  • ok, unmounting /dev doesn't make sense but why cannot I unmount /dev/mtdblock3 ? (also triggers an invalid argument error but if I mount it at a random location I can successfully run umount /dev/mtdblock3). [/dev/root does not exist, that's why I'm focusing on /dev/mtdblock3 shown by proc/cmdline.]
    – Zermingore
    Aug 30, 2016 at 14:22
  • You can't unmount / because lol. (You're using it. Although from that error message, it sounds like it's special-cased as well). chroot doesn't change that. I'm pretty sure you can't unmount implicitly, and that's a terrible idea anyway. Close resources explicitly in order to receive errors. The solution you're looking for was created for old-style initrds (initial ramdisks). Use pivot_root
    – sourcejedi
    Aug 30, 2016 at 15:47
  • Sorry I meant I cannot unmount my old root from the new. (pivot_root <new_root> <old_root> and then umount /old_root/dev/mtdblock3)
    – Zermingore
    Aug 30, 2016 at 15:51
  • that is not the command sequence documented in pivot_root(8). Open a new question (or edit this one) to specify unambiguously what you have tried and what the result was.
    – sourcejedi
    Aug 30, 2016 at 16:51
  • Actually, I opened another question about pivot_root() earlier and then opened this one to solve it. As you perfectly answered the question (how to umount /dev playing with chroot), I think we agree that this question is closed.
    – Zermingore
    Aug 31, 2016 at 6:39

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