8.3 Jails on 8.4 Host

E

ethoms

I have just finished migrating all our services to FreeBSD jails. This allows me to re-install our main server and transfer the jails across to the new installation. The existing temporary server is FreeBSD 8.3, all the jails where created on that installation using ezjail.

My question is, can I install 8.4 when it is released and transfer my 8.3 jails to it? I never had any problems with my traditional (no ezjail) 8.2 jails running on a 8.3 host system, until I had time to rebuild them using ezjails. But this time I don't want to take risks.

There is too much work and risk for me to rebuild the jails again on 8.4, I just got everything working great. So if unless somebody can tell me "yeah, no problem running mismatched jail/host versions" then I will just use tried and tested FreeBSD 8.3.

The only I would possibly benefit from in 8.4 is security fixes/enhancements and ZFS enhancements. Is it worth it?
 
It's not recommended of course but running an 8.3 jail on an 8.4 host shouldn't pose any problems.
 
It shouldn't be a problem but you can do a test in virtualbox with similar setups as your production server and do ezjail upgrade to be sure nothing breaks. Be sure to back up everything first.
 
Thanks guys, gave me some ideas. I think I'll just use 8.3 to start with, 8.4 not out yet and I need to get moving. I haven't tried ezjail upgrade yet, I think I'll do it in a testing installation first. I don't have much experience with FreeBSD upgrades at all. I usually just do a fresh install and redo from scratch, except carrying over key configuration files. But this time that is not possible since there's just too much to do. I guess that's a bad trait I've acquired from my Windows days.

In fact, not having to update all the time is one of the reasons I've grown to love FreeBSD. From a security perspective, that's not good. But it can just take up so much time an energy keeping everything up to date.

I do like the way it's all done in Debian, don't have to think or worry too much about it. But then the control FreeBSD brings is worth it. I must check out this PKGNG thingy, it sounds good. But I think I'll end up sticking to ports.
 
Ports and PKGNG are not mutually exclusive but complementary. Ports are installed/registered as packages and if you use PKGNG the packages get registered as PKGNG packages.
 
PKGNG is really nice to use with jails. You can update/install packages from the host.

# pkg -j 1 update
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top