is it ok to reuse jail names?

[alwu]

i'm on freenas 11.1-u4 and was playing around with jails created via the gui while installing logitech media server. i had to try several times to install lms because i got errors, i wanted to try different options, or the install didn't run cleanly. i used the portmaster method and since i didn't know the best way to reset before a new build, i would delete the jail via the gui, and then create a new one. in doing so, i noticed some interesting behavior.

when i created the lms jail the first time via the gui, it took a while and i got the progress bar that showed the progress of the freebsd installation. when i ran jls in a shell, the jid i got for the lms jail was 2. i only have 1 other jail going for now. if i deleted the lms jail and created a new one with the same name, it would happen faster; no freebsd progress bar. jls would show the original lms jid+1.

when i settled on the recipe i wanted to install lms, i wanted to start really fresh. i deleted the lms jail and created a new one with a name i never used before. this time, it took longer and the freebsd progress bar came back. when i did jls, the jid for this brand new lms jail was back to 2.

is this expected behavior? when i was deleting and recreating a jail with the same name, was it really getting deleted? from the behavior i saw, it seems like freenas was reusing the old jail space of the same name. is it ok to reuse jail names? it seems safer to not to.

 

[Jailer]

is this expected behavior?

Yes. The first time you create the jail it downloads the jail template. Each successive jail is created from the template that it previously downloaded so it doesn't take much time at all to create them. You're perfectly fine reusing jail names.