Run existing FreeBSD installation inside jail

Mikhail Vladimirov vladimirow at mail.ru
Fri Jul 21 13:34:46 UTC 2006


Hello.

I own server which runs FreeBSD 4.x-STABLE (last updated 27 March
2006).  I want to update it to 6.x-STABLE.  I known, that update via
sources is not recommended in my situation, so I want to do clear
installation.  The problem is the following: there is many ports
installed, many Internet sites hosted on old system and so on.  It
will take a lot of time to configure new system to do all things,
which old system was doing.  But I don't want that services do be not
accessible for a long time.

I want to try the following trick:

1. Install FreeBSD 6.x-STABLE on the separate HDD, while it is inside
my home PC.
2. Place this HDD into server, make it bootable.
3. Boot new system, and mount old HDD (with FreeBSD 4.x and all old
stuff)
4. Setup jail inside new system, which will run old system.
5. Now I have all services running, and I can transfer it to new
system one by one quietly.

I believe, that FreeBSD is backward compatible, and all my stuff,
which successfully run on 4.x sill run inside jail on 6.x.  I am
right?  Did anybody tried to do something like this?  What was the
results?

--
Best regards
Mikhail Vladimirov <vladimirow at mail.ru>

P.S. I already have jail inside my current installation of 4.x.  So I
actually plan to setup two jails inside new 6.x.  One for original
system and another for my current jailed system, which also run
several useful services.




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