Problems importing jails - how do I do it properly?

[Kakistocrtor]

Hi,
I'm currently migrating to new hardware and ran into some irritating problems when trying to import my jails on the new server. Some things didn't work as expected.

Here's what I did, on a nearly untouched FreeNAS installation (created a few users, samba shares, and installed the emby plugin):
I exported a jail on my old server using warden export and copied it to the new server. I used warden import to import it, which executed without displaying any kind of error.

The new jail was displayed with the name OFF by warden list, and this is also the name used for the jail and meta folder in my jail root directory. I expected it to use the original name ("murmur") from the old system.

The jail wasn't displayed at all using the jls command.

It was displayed in the FreeNAS GUI using the original hostname "murmur", not "OFF".

Trying to interact with the jail in the GUI resulted in an error discussed on these forums before, caused by multiple jails having the same ID - the imported jail was assigned ID 1, which, of course, was already in use. Setting a new unique ID in .OFF.meta/id manually solved that problem, but I don't think thats how this is supposed to work - where did I go wrong there?

Trying to start the jail from the GUI displayed
Jail successfully started.
but didn't have any other results. In particular the jail wasn't started.

warden start murmur didn't work because ERROR: No such jail!

warden start OFF looked better, but failed because the jail was configured to use DHCP:

Code:

Mounting user-supplied file-systems
ifconfig: DHCP/: bad value (width invalid)
jail -c path=/mnt/main/jails/OFF ip4.addr=DHCP/ host.hostname=murmur allow.raw_sockets=true persist
jail: ip4.addr: not an IPv4 address: DHCP
ERROR: Failed starting jail with above command...
Unmounting /mnt/main/jails/OFF/proc

I tried setting a static IP for the jail in the GUI. That failed without displaying any error. Setting one manually in .OFF.meta/ipv4 worked - I still couldn't start the jail using the gui, but it started without error using warden start. It was still displayed as turned off in the gui, but it ran perfectly fine (logged in via SSH and played around a bit). Also, it was now displayed by jls:

Code:

JID  IP Address  Hostname  Path
  5  -  emby_1  /mnt/main/jails/emby_1
  6  192.168.199.240 murmur  /mnt/main/jails/OFF

I still wasn't able to interact with it in any interesting way from the gui, in particular I couldn't mount any storage. The gui just kept loading when I tried to choose the mount destination in the jail.

My questions are:
Is what I experienced expected behaviour? How does it differ from expected behaviour?
How are the names of the jails displayed by warden list, the gui and jls connected? How are they connected to the names used for the directories in the jails root directory?
What should I do to import jails with the correct name and a unique id? What should I do to be able to interact with these jails from the gui (especially to add storage) and to have them use DHCP instead of static IPs (while retaining the ability to start them...)?

I looked for information on this in the FreeNAS and Warden documentation but wasn't able to find anything that helped me. When creating new jails with the warden it seems to be possible to configure them to use DHCP, but not when importing...
I hope I have explained my problem properly and didn't miss any important information. If you want me to clarify something or provide additional info, please ask.

 

[dlavigne]

The FreeNAS implementation of jails does not fully support the warden import/export commands and I've yet to see anyone successfully use that on a FreeNAS system. Best bet is to snapshot and then clone or replicate the dataset containing the jail.

 

[ksignorini]

The FreeNAS implementation of jails does not fully support the warden import/export commands and I've yet to see anyone successfully use that on a FreeNAS system. Best bet is to snapshot and then clone or replicate the dataset containing the jail.

I know this is a bit of an older thread, but could you please elaborate on how to do this? I would also like to know the 1, 2, 3, 4... steps to getting a working copy of a jail going.

Thanks!