I followed the handbook section 14 to set up a few jails. For a long time they didn't start up automatically when the system booted, though. If I typed
It turned out that a file /usr/local/etc/ezjail/.notifier caused this. I'm not sure how it got there, but moving it out seemed to fix that.
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/ezjail start or service ezjail start or service ezjail stop there'd be no output and it never finished. But I could start up any specific jail: service ezjail start tsdb for example, or ezjail-admin console -f tsdb. It turned out that a file /usr/local/etc/ezjail/.notifier caused this. I'm not sure how it got there, but moving it out seemed to fix that.