How do you update jails?

[nuneya]

I'm new to both FreeBSD and FreeNAS, but so far I quite like the jails and have already accumulated about 6-7 jails, with plans to double or triple that number in the next month as I'm transitioning various things to FreeNAS.

But with that I'm starting to get worried about stale packages in jails. Some jails/plugins will update themselves, but most won't. So what do people do? Do you set up some sort of notification system and them manually update, or do you automatically update packages, or do you just let them be until you just must upgrade, or some other option?

In case that makes a difference - I'm a long time Linux user and am very comfortable with never seeing a gui.

 

[danb35]

So what do people do?

Code:

#! /bin/bash
for jail in "jail1 jail2 jail3"; do
  jexec $jail pkg upgrade -y
done

 

[nuneya]

Do you unconditionally run that on a timer? I guess you're protected by snapshots in case something goes wrong because of it?

 

[danb35]

Do you unconditionally run that on a timer?

I think I have a cron job running once a week. My script is a little more complicated, as it also restarts a few services. Someone else has posted a much more sophisticated script, which parses the pkg output to see what needs to be restarted.

 

[ByteNick]

I think I have a cron job running once a week. My script is a little more complicated, as it also restarts a few services. Someone else has posted a much more sophisticated script, which parses the pkg output to see what needs to be restarted.

And how do that sophisticated script looks like? ;-)

 

[danb35]

It was posted in this forum, but I don't have a link. I'd expect you could find it with a search, though.

 

[ByteNick]

It was posted in this forum, but I don't have a link. I'd expect you could find it with a search, though.

I did, was unable though.
Meanwhile, I tried to run your (simple) script above from the FreeNAS CLI. It says "Command not found"

 

[danb35]

Well, you're replying to a six-month-old thread, and a lot has changed in six months. Most importantly, the release of FreeNAS 11.2, which makes iocage the standard jail manager rather than warden. But in any event, I'm pretty sure the error message said more than just "Command not found". What exactly did, and what exactly was the result?

 

[Redcoat]

Try https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/auto-update-jails-script.68490/ for the multi-jail script - first cite in my search "jails update script"

 

[danb35]

Try https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/auto-update-jails-script.68490/ for the multi-jail script

I'm pretty sure that's the one I was thinking of.

 

[Redcoat]

It's the only one as comprehensive that I recall. I had incorrectly remembered it as "a Spearfoot" until I saw it again.

 

[ByteNick]

Okay, thank you both.

I also found this: https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/how-to-update-all-of-your-jails-at-once.21397/ which is also interesting to look at.

 

[Redcoat]

Note @danb35's earlier comment about the change in standard jail managers. Cyberjock wrote for warden, Ezra for iocage (and under 11.2).