Comments on: How To Upgrade FreeBSD Jail ( OS Level Virtualization )

By: Lars

Lars — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:49:07 +0000

I’ve upgraded jails from FreeBSD 6.3 to 7.0-REL and it worked like a charm.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 04:22:15 +0000

I haven’t done a major upgrade (6.3-to-7.0) of a jail host system jet, but I’ve successfully upgraded a production server from a minor release to another (RELENG_6_2 to RELENG_6_3), by using the method described by Valqk (ezjail-admin update + mergemaster), and all worked fine!

By: Sigmar Wiesmayr

Sigmar Wiesmayr — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:29:06 +0000

Hi folks, I’m asking myself, whether it will be safe to do this upgrade from 6.3-RELEASE to 7.0-RELEASE.

Anybody out there, how has done a major version upgrade with his base system and then with his jails?

What will the jails do when hosted by a 7.0-RELEASE but themselves not upgraded yet?

TIA,
Sigmar

By: vivek

vivek — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:19:10 +0000

David,

Thanks for the heads up.

By: David

David — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:26:16 +0000

For “Step # 4: Start all jails”, you have:

# /etc/init.d/jail start

It should be:

# /etc/rc.d/jail start

By: vivek

vivek — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:40:00 +0000

is really necessary setting DESTDIR variable while making buildworld?
No, you can actually run it as follows:
make buildworld make installworld DESTDIR=/path/to/jail/1 make installworld DESTDIR=/path/to/jail/2 make installworld DESTDIR=/path/to/jail/N

HTH

By: demerzel

demerzel — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:10:46 +0000

thanks for this mini howto :)
just a question… you say:
make buildworld DESTDIR=$JAIL

is really necessary setting DESTDIR variable while
making buildworld?

you also say:
“Please note that If you have just done make buildworld previously you can do make installworld and save the time.”

This makes me think… one buildworld… one or more installworld (with different DESTDIR for each jail)

either DESTDIR in buildworld is useless or we have
to make buildworld for each jail…

Just to be sure,
thank you very much indeed ;)

By: vivek

vivek — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 17:50:41 +0000

@Chirs,

Thanks for the heads up.

@Valqk,
Thanks for sharing your idea.

By: Chris Ruiz

Chris Ruiz — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 21:19:20 +0000

You missed a very important step- you must run mergemaster to update /etc in the new jail!

after running make installworld DESTDIR=$JAIL you need to run mergemaster -i -C -D $JAIL

By: Valqk

Valqk — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 09:45:28 +0000

You can optionally use ezjail – /usr/ports/sysutils/ezjail
A *great* tool, you can automatically create new jail for seconds, there are ‘flavours’ that you can configure and have *almost anything* setuped in new jail upon creation.
Also you can create jail in regular image file (which can be crypted!)… a lot of features and one of the best – upgrade in 3 steps:
1. cvsup /usr/src dir.
2. build/install world on base system.
2. ezjail-admin update -i
If the -i (install only) option is given, ezjail-admin update only per-
formes a make installworld, otherwise make world is invoked.