Jailctl

INTRODUCTION
jailctl was originally written to overcome some of the apparent shortcomings of FreeBSD 4.x-series; the complete lack of utilities to create and manage jails. This situation has changed somewhat with FreeBSD 5.x, but instead of giving up on jailctl I have decided to upgrade it to support this new platform as well - and to reap the benefits of the new tools available in 5.x.
Although there are a few other packages out there that help doing this, I wasn't really happy with any of them and - thinking I could do better - decided to write a jail management script myself.
Whether or not I have succeeded in creating something useful for anyone other than myself is yet to be determined.

FEATURES
jailctl is a /bin/sh script, which currently has the ability to:
 - Start and stop jails
 - Create jails (with installworld and subsequent cleaning up)
 - Upgrade jails (with installworld and mergemaster)
 - Deleting jails
 - Backing up jails
 - Restoring jails
 - Show jail status and process list per jail

DOWNLOAD
jailctl can be downloaded here.

INSTALLATION
Consult the INSTALL file for installation instructions. If you don't use the port (sysutils/jailctl) to install, make sure you consult the jailctl(1) man page, after copying the jailctl.1.gz file to /usr/local/man/man1 if necessary (as described in INSTALL).

FUTURE PLANS
 - More per-jail configuration
 - Support for file-based and remote filesystems for jails
 - Support for mounting host /usr, /bin, etc. in jails
 - Tool/option to generate jail configuration defaults from a series of questions, adduser style
 - Web-interface for jail control
 - Host-based firewalling on a per-jail basis
 - ... and more ...

CONTACT
The author can be contacted at ltning-jailctl at anduin dot net.

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