jailctl 0.80 review

jailctl is a FreeBSD /bin/sh script to ease the creating and maintenance of jails. jailctl was originally written to overcome some

License: BSD License File size: 24K Developer: jailctl Team

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jailctl is a FreeBSD /bin/sh script to ease the creating and maintenance of jails.

jailctl was originally written to overcome some of the apparent shortcomings of FreeBSD 4.x-series; the complete lack of utilities to create and manage jails.

This situation has changed somewhat with FreeBSD 5.x, but instead of giving up on jailctl I have decided to upgrade it to support this new platform as well - and to reap the benefits of the new tools available in 5.x.

Although there are a few other packages out there that help doing this, I wasn't really happy with any of them and - thinking I could do better - decided to write a jail management script myself.

Whether or not I have succeeded in creating something useful for anyone other than myself is yet to be determined.

Here are some key features of "jailctl":
Start and stop jails
Create jails (with installworld and subsequent cleaning up)
Upgrade jails (with installworld and mergemaster)
Deleting jails
Backing up jails
Restoring jails
Show jail status and process list per jail

Installation:

Consult the INSTALL file for installation instructions. If you don't use the port (sysutils/jailctl) to install, make sure you consult the jailctl(1) man page, after copying the jailctl.1.gz file to /usr/local/man/man1 if necessary (as described in INSTALL).

What's New in This Release:
This release adds the ability to specify custom paths for jails.
The default configuration files have been slightly adjusted for jails.
The jailctl man page has been updated, and a jails.conf man page added.