Updating a running jail

[Tom McLaughlin]

Hi, I have a machine which I am running a jail on to be used as a clean
work space for ports work.  I got tired of messing up the ports tree and
installed ports on my desktop so I figured a jails would be the best
solution.  The jail host is running FreeBSD-stable because I'm waiting
for some changes in FreeBSD-6 to be MFC'ed.  What I want to know is what
is the best way to keep my jail up to date with -stable?  (Well,
actually keep the jail in sync with the jailhost which runs -stable.)
I've already figured out how to handle the ports within the jail so that
is not a problem, only worried about keeping the base up to date.

I've thought of a couple of ideas so far.  One is to dispose of the old
jail and build a new one.  That just won't work for my needs and is a
waste of time from what I see.  My jail is setup "the way I like it" so
working in the jail is comfortable, ie. I have a lot of config files
permissions set, and a decent number of packages installed to make life
easier for me when logged in.

My next idea is to use a script on the jailhost which carries out the
steps for building a jail from the manpage and essentially installing
over the old jail.  I just wonder how that will affect /etc within the
jail.  I want many of the changes to /etc that occur in -stable but I
don't want to overwrite all the changes I have made.  I guess I could
skip `make distribution' and run mergemaster later.

My last idea is to mount the jailhost's /usr/src and /usr/obj
directories into the jail with nullfs and then after having run
buildworld on the jailhost, run installworld in the jail and then use
mergemaster to take care of /etc within the jail.  I've used a similar
process to update OpenBSD machines over NFS but have never tried it on
FreeBSD.

Can anyone tell me what they do to manage their jails and keep them up
to date?  Thanks.

Tom

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