A jail is a directory tree that you create within your file system; the user cannot see any directories or files that are outside the jail directory. The user is jailed in that directory and it subdirectories. The chroot(2) system call is used by jailkit to put the user inside the jail.

What is chroot jail Linux?

change root (chroot) in Unix-like systems such as Linux, is a means of separating specific user operations from the rest of the Linux system; changes the apparent root directory for the current running user process and its child process with new root directory called a chrooted jail.

What does chroot mean?

A chroot is an operation that changes the apparent root directory for the current running process and their children. A program that is run in such a modified environment cannot access files and commands outside that environmental directory tree.