Binary jail install/maintain/upgrade code (plus ezjail replacement)
Mike Wayne
FreeBSD_jail at wayne47.com
Mon Jul 22 20:26:34 UTC 2019
A while ago I discovered that jails installed as purely binary jails
(where /usr/src is not installed) using ezjail can never be upgraded.
This led to a lot of investigation where I also discovered that
freebsd-update can not update a jail from the host. This means
that jails with no Internet access (used for local access only) can
not be easily upgraded.
To deal with this, I developed replacement code with these features:
- The layout of a jail is built to be almost exactly what ezjail
creates, including symlinks and nullfs mounts, changing basejail
to BaseJail and newjail to NewJail. This permits both ezjail and
this system to run in parallel on the same system.
- Runs on UFS. This is a hard design requirement as I need to
be able to run multiple jails in VFS systems with 512MB RAM and
10GB disk space. Plus I need dump/restore which ZFS does not support.
- There are no package dependencies at all, everything is done
using code in base.
- The entire system is contained in one file, though it does
write support files as it does its work.
- Jails are currently installed using whatever distribution is
already downloaded. An option is provided to determine which
release will be installed before installation (needs work).
- Jails are installed and upgraded using free-bsdupdate. /usr/src
is never required.
- ALL work is done from the host. No jail needs Internet access
to be installed or upgraded.
- Because of the way upgrades are done, jails MUST not be running
to be upgraded. Sanity checks are provided to help prevent user
errors.
- Jails and the base system can be checked with freebsd-update IDS.
- While not presently implemented, I plan to support upgrading
binary-only jails which were installed with ezjail.
At this point, things seem to be working. This is NOT ready for
public release so I am not posting code here. I'd like to find one
or two people who are willing to work with what I have, going through
the install/upgrade process a bunch of times and tell me what I've
done wrong and suggest improvements.
Cautions:
- There will have to be some discussion between us to understand
how things work. Documentation is very limited.
- There are some VERY ugly hacks going to to make all this work.
- If your response is "you should use ZFS" please don't respond.
If this sounds like something you would like to help out with, and
you have some time to dedicate to it, please contact me directly
and we'll get started.
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