FreeBSD Jails

[Echelon]

With the exception of a small number of providers out there, I've noticed that there aren't too many providers out there that offer FreeBSD jails as an enclosure service. Now, I do understand the lack thereof management panels for easy control by providers who really have no interest in rolling their own, but I'm pondering the amount of interest there may be in doing a lightweight enclosure using FreeBSD Jails for customers.

 

[jarland]

I think the bulk of it is that linux pretty much won the hobbyist and DIY web server markets. I love BSD, but I just find less and less people who have the patience to learn it. If I had to pick which Unix variant would've been the popular one, I'd have picked BSD. But...the people have spoken.

 

[Shados]

If I had to pick which Unix variant would've been the popular one, I'd have picked BSD. But...the people have spoken.

Out of curiosity, mind taking the time to elaborate on why you would've picked BSD?

 

[wlanboy]

There are 4 different types of BSD:


FreeBSD
aims for high performance and ease of use by end users, and is a favourite of
web content providers. It runs on a number of platforms, including i386™ based systems (“PCs”),
systems based on the AMD 64-bit processors, UltraSPARC® based systems,
systems based on Compaq's Alpha processors and systems based around the NEC PC-98 specification.
The FreeBSD project has significantly more users than the other projects.

NetBSD
aims for maximum portability: “of course it runs NetBSD”. It runs on machines from palmtops
to large servers, and has even been used on NASA space missions. It is a particularly
good choice for running on old non-Intel® hardware.

OpenBSD
aims for security and code purity: it uses a combination of the open source concept and
rigorous code reviews to create a system which is demonstrably correct, making it the
choice of security-conscious organizations such as banks, stock exchanges and
US Government departments. Like NetBSD, it runs on a number of platforms.

DragonFlyBSD
aims for high performance and scalability under everything from a single-node UP system
to a massively clustered system. DragonFlyBSD has several long-range technical goals,
but focus lies on providing a SMP-capable infrastructure that is easy to understand,
maintain and develop for.

On my point of view there are 4 advantages:

• The BSD license allows you to freely modify the code. Unlike the GPL, there are no restrictions on how you choose to distribute the resulting software.
• Linux is only a kernel which different distributions are using (Debian/Ubuntu/Redhat/Suse/...) while BSD is a complete operating system. So no differnt configs or paths.
• The ports system.
  With one command, a piece of software, and any dependencies it may have, will be downloaded from a trusted location, built and custom configured for your particular hardware.
• That is pure compatibility.
  The modules enable FreeBSD to run binary programs built for other operating systems (yup Linux too).
  
  That includes backward compatibility. Upgrades are much easier to handle than is frequently the case with Linux. BSD handles library version upgrades by providing compatibility modules for earlier library versions.
  A number of commercial vendors have FreeBSD 3.x and even 2.x binaries they still sell today because they don't need to change the executables in order to have them run on current versions of FreeBSD.
  

One BSD which a lot of people forget is: Mac OS X or better its underlying layer Darwin.

But I am still using Ubuntu on my Laptop and Debian on my servers. I am used to the debian system.

 

[peterw]

BSD is to complicated to use.

 

[scv]

BSD is to complicated to use.

No less complicated than Linux. You even get the option of binary packages if you really can't manage a ports tree.

 

[johng]

I love Linux. I was running Linux just for fun while I was in high school; I'm 30 now. In the last year, I switched almost all of my VPSs and dedicated servers to FreeBSD for a few reasons.

First, there is a consistency to the structure that I really appreciate. For example, if it is included in the base system, the config will be in /etc. On the other hand, if it is something I installed, I just need to look in /usr/local/etc.

Second, while I know jail security is not perfect (it's pretty stinking good though), it affords a level of compartmentalization.

Third, I love the documentation. The handbook is great for beginners and more advanced users alike. There are portions that need revision (and are undergoing it at the moment), but by and large, it's a great reference–all in one place. I feel like the man pages are more complete than the Linux equivalents. This is not across the board, and it could all be in my mind.

Finally, baked-in ZFS support for dedicated servers is great. Yes, there is a learning curve. No, it is not an out-of-the-box solution for everything (for example, snapshots are NOT backups; though if you follow a few steps, they can serve as backups).

 

[peterw]

Does anyone have a good todo about creating and maintaining jails?

 

[blergh]

FreeBSD is great for doing Jails. The main reason for not seeing many hosts doing it is most probably the knowledge needed to run, maintain and actually use them. I would love to see that in Europe.

 

[Danthe]

I used FreeBSD as my primary desktop OS for over a year and liked it a lot. One of the major reasons I loved FreeBSD so much is that, on a whim, I could start building my environment over from scratch without actually starting from scratch. By that I mean, rm -rf /usr/local. This would essentially remove all of the installed software and leave a usable base system and my data in tact! I ended up doing this twice throughout the year and a half I used FreeBSD. The first time because I screwed up my ports dependancies somehow, and the second time when I decided to switch from ports to the new pkg-ng system.

No less complicated than Linux. You even get the option of binary packages if you really can't manage a ports tree.

As for the pkg-ng system, I found that it was much better than the standard binary package system as far as handling deps and just easier to use in general. You can read more about it here: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/pkgng-intro.html

I found that using pkg-ng along with the PC-BSD package repositories (http://wiki.pcbsd.org/index.php/Turn_FreeBSD_into_PC-BSD%C2%AE) made using FreeBSD as a desktop operating system a dream.

I used the PC-BSD package repos, but I did not install pcbsd-base. I kept a custom compiled kernel and just installed packages as I needed them from the PC-BSD repo. I found that the binaries in the PC-BSD repos had very sane compile time options. If I ran into a package that I didn't like the compile time options on, I'd just install it through ports.

 

[Deleted]

I've been using *BSD since 4.3 Tahoe (1980s), and I use it primarily for my development environment; I also use DFly with HAMMER (which is comparable to ZFS in some aspects)

 

[wlanboy]

I have added a FreeBSD (+ jails) tutorial for all ones interested in the FreeBSD world.

 

[jarland]

Out of curiosity, mind taking the time to elaborate on why you would've picked BSD?

Just saw this, sorry. It's more about how you think and how you like to handle things at the end of the day. I like the idea of focusing on the entire package, which later on we started seeing Linux distributions do, though not to the same degree as BSD and many would say that's a positive. But in the early days, we didn't have as strong of a focus on a complete package with Linux. Also, to me, the monolithic kernel is a more appealing structure and it just always seemed more logical to me. But the one thing I can't say is that one is infinitely better than the other. I think that in the earlier days BSD had more structure and appeared to be on a less chaotic path. Ultimately, it became true that BSD simply fell behind Linux in a lot of ways. But had you asked me back then, I'd have said no doubt BSD is going to win this thing.