proot-me/proot

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

2583 stars · 482 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

PRoot is a user-space implementation of chroot, mount --bind, and binfmt_misc for Linux that requires no privileges or setup, built on ptrace. It lets users run an arbitrary directory as a root filesystem, bind-mount host paths into it, and transparently execute programs for foreign CPU architectures via QEMU user-mode.

Use cases

• run a linux distro rootfs without root privileges
• chroot without being root
• run arm binaries on x86 linux
• cross-compile packages in a foreign architecture environment
• bind mount host files into a guest rootfs as unprivileged user
• instrument linux processes with ptrace
• test packages in an isolated filesystem on android termux

When to choose

• you need chroot-like isolation without root or kernel modules
• you want to run foreign-architecture binaries transparently via QEMU user-mode
• you're on a system where you can't use containers (e.g., Android/Termux, shared hosting)
• you need to mix host and guest programs in one filesystem view

When to avoid

• you need strong security isolation - ptrace-based confinement is not a security sandbox
• you can use containers or real chroot with proper privileges for better performance
• you need to run on non-Linux platforms

Facets

cli-tool · maturity active

security developer-tools cli file-system developer-tools operating-systems cli c chroot ptrace userland-exec rootfs qemu-user-mode cross-compilation sandboxing binfmt-misc command-line linux

Member repositories

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