Multiple Directories for Jails

[Philippe Lang]

owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org wrote:
> On 29 Jan 2007, at 5:04 PM, Björn König wrote:
> 
>> Karl Fischer schrieb:
>>> Hi
>>> I'm a n00b to freebsd and jails is there away that I can specify
>>> multiple Directories in the jails.conf ?
>>> JAIL_HOME="/data1; /data2" etc.
>> 
>> What are you trying to do or what do you expect?
>> 
>> A file system hierarchy can only have one root directory. You
>> probably want to play with unionfs. You can read about its concept
>> here: http://people.freebsd.org/~daichi/unionfs/
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnionFS
>> 
>> Regards Björn
> 
> Hi
> Basically the Drive that the Jails are hosted on is running out of
> space. 
> By adding another mounted Partition I will have more space.
> 
> If I add a new Drive to the Machine ...
> mount it under /data2 can I just stop the jails and copy them across
> modify the jails.conf and start it up ? I guess the best procedure
> should be to back them up and restore them there ? 
> 
> Thanks for the help
> Karl

Hi,

Jails don't absolutely need to have the same root. I'm not sure where you found your "JAIL_HOME" and "jails.conf" (a script?), but each jail needs a "rootdir", which can be a path to whatever you want. You can configure this "rootdir" in /etc/rc.conf. Have a look there.

Depending on how much space your actual jails are using, you may consider moving all your jails onto a new drive, instead of moving part of them. It is maybe easier to manage your system this way, although not necessary at all.

Hope this will help you,

Philippe