tl;dr -- Can I take a copy of a jail in FreeBSD 4.7 and move it to a new 4.7 basehost and have it work? Or does it have to be built on the server?
Long Version --
We have a legacy web server (v4.7) that we don't actively use but we have to keep it around for legal purposes. We currently have it hosted right now with a company, but we're looking to get away from them and host this ourselves so we don't have to spend so much money to keep this thing alive. The hosting provider is completely unwilling to aid us in any backup operation, they won't share any information on how our server is virtualized (although a few things they have said lead me to believe we're in a jail) and essentially won't give us anything other than a snapshot of our data on an FTP server.
The unfortunate part with this server is that the web service that's running on it is completely dependent on it's current EXACT setup. Anything older or newer of any of the same packages (php, perl, apache, mysql, etc..) and it will not work, which is why it was never upgraded past 4.7. So I've tried rebuilding this server but we've run into so many missing dependencies, libraries and packages that we have failed in every attempt to actually make a second working copy of this server. So we consider this server 'fragile'. Now, legal reasons have popped up and we need to make some modifications to the server, but we're afraid of breaking it beyond repair in the process. And as I have mentioned, our hosting company could care less.
So I was wondering, if I take this data backup they've given me, can I build a new bare 4.7 system with jails, put the data backup into a directory, then configure rc.conf with the appropriate directives and start it up as a jail? Would this be possible without having access to the host system?
Long Version --
We have a legacy web server (v4.7) that we don't actively use but we have to keep it around for legal purposes. We currently have it hosted right now with a company, but we're looking to get away from them and host this ourselves so we don't have to spend so much money to keep this thing alive. The hosting provider is completely unwilling to aid us in any backup operation, they won't share any information on how our server is virtualized (although a few things they have said lead me to believe we're in a jail) and essentially won't give us anything other than a snapshot of our data on an FTP server.
The unfortunate part with this server is that the web service that's running on it is completely dependent on it's current EXACT setup. Anything older or newer of any of the same packages (php, perl, apache, mysql, etc..) and it will not work, which is why it was never upgraded past 4.7. So I've tried rebuilding this server but we've run into so many missing dependencies, libraries and packages that we have failed in every attempt to actually make a second working copy of this server. So we consider this server 'fragile'. Now, legal reasons have popped up and we need to make some modifications to the server, but we're afraid of breaking it beyond repair in the process. And as I have mentioned, our hosting company could care less.
So I was wondering, if I take this data backup they've given me, can I build a new bare 4.7 system with jails, put the data backup into a directory, then configure rc.conf with the appropriate directives and start it up as a jail? Would this be possible without having access to the host system?