diff --git a/nix/libstore/build.cc b/nix/libstore/build.cc
index 63540ddfc1..d68e8b2bc0 100644
--- a/nix/libstore/build.cc
+++ b/nix/libstore/build.cc
@@ -2086,12 +2086,8 @@ void DerivationGoal::runChild()
                outside of the namespace.  Making a subtree private is
                local to the namespace, though, so setting MS_PRIVATE
                does not affect the outside world. */
-            Strings mounts = tokenizeString<Strings>(readFile("/proc/self/mountinfo", true), "\n");
-            foreach (Strings::iterator, i, mounts) {
-                vector<string> fields = tokenizeString<vector<string> >(*i, " ");
-                string fs = decodeOctalEscaped(fields.at(4));
-                if (mount(0, fs.c_str(), 0, MS_PRIVATE, 0) == -1)
-                    throw SysError(format("unable to make filesystem `%1%' private") % fs);
+            if (mount(0, "/", 0, MS_REC|MS_PRIVATE, 0) == -1) {
+                throw SysError("unable to make ‘/’ private mount");
             }
 
             /* Bind-mount chroot directory to itself, to treat it as a