preferred jail management tool

[Ernie Luzar]

Michael W. Lucas wrote:
> Hi,
>
> For those who haven't heard, I'm writing a book on jails. Some details
> are at http://blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/2286.
>
> I want to cover at least one jail management tool. I've done some
> research into jail tools. You can see my results at
> http://blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/2291.
>
> (No, I'm not trying to drag traffic to my blog. I just don't want to
> cut-and-paste it to a mailing list. ;-)
>
> I have several choices of jail management tools to write about.  It
> seems that ezjail gets all the press. I'm wondering if this is because
> it's the first tool, or if it's the best of its kind.
>
> I also hear a lot of whinging about ezjail. I suspect that's because
> it's the most widely deployed tool of it's type, however. The one in
> front gets the most mud slung at it.
>
> Looking at the documentation, I'm highly intrigued by iocage. It seems
> to do everything that ezjail does and then some.
>
> CBSD also looks like a really good choice. Based on what I know now,
> I'm inclined to cover iocage and CBSD.
>
> I want to ask the experts, though. Which is you guys.
>
> Any recommendations on what I should cover, or not cover? Any big
> screaming red flags in these tools that I should be aware of?
>
> Thanks,
> ==ml
>
>   
I started with ezjail and was so disappointed in it's lack of 
documentation in its [man pages] that I found it to be useless unless 
you can
follow it's rats nest of script source code. Now with the change in 
jail(8) configuration file from rc.conf to jail.conf that has been
slowly making its way into FreeBSD operating system since 9.1 , and 
scheduled to be totally removed in 11.0.
ezjail has not been updated to use jail.conf yet so ezjail reaches it's 
[end of life] with FreeBSD 11.0 which is on schedule to be
published by June.

qjail is a fork of ezjail. qjail is fully documented and jail.conf 
compliant. qjail's real strength is it's user friendliness and it's ability
to auto create large numbers of jails from a single command. Qjail can 
also setup vimage jails which ezjail does not do.
There are many other major differences between ezjail and qjail that 
makes qjail far easier to admin jails. A simple review of
ezjail and qjail man pages will make this point very obvious to the reader.

Qjail is a simple standalone script and the port has no dependents like 
the other tools you mention at your URL. Any jail tool requiring
one of the other programing language as a dependent is a show stopper in 
my view.   

ezjail has incorporated zfs into its script and as zfs has changed it 
takes a very long time for those zfs changes to be added to ezjail.
On the other hand qjail uses the jail.conf zfs parameters as the door 
way for zfs as the jail(8) developers have intended.
ezjail is the old man on the block soon to be planted in the grave yard.

So my recommendation is to cover qjail in detail and use it as the ruler 
to measure the other jail tools that you select to write about.

I read your post at http://blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/2291 and 
it reads like a review based on a reading of the ports comments.
I recommend you install and use the jail tools you intend to write about 
before you start talking like an expert authority on a subject
you really know little about.
To get you started, here is a good URL for you to read  
http://jail-primer.sourceforge.net/

To the ezjail die hearts on this List. The above is my option based on 
my usage experience and not intended to start a flame war.