jails Confusion about what FreeBSD version the jail managed by iocage really is at

[nimo]

Hi,

I run FreeBSD 14.0 on the host and have been running iocage for many years. Current installed version of iocage is 1.2.

The jail is running version 13.1 according to iocage:

root@host:~ # iocage get release webserver-01
13.1-RELEASE

But if I login to the jail:

root@host:~ # iocage console webserver-01
Last login: Tue Jan  7 15:23:30 on pts/5
FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p3 #0: Mon Dec 11 04:56:01 UTC 2023     root@amd64-builder.daemonology.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/amd64.amd64/sys/GENERIC

Welcome to FreeBSD!

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Edit /etc/motd to change this login announcement.
root@webserver-01:~ #

Now I am confused -- which version is the jail webserver-01 really running?

Thanks in advance!

 

[SirDice]

Login on the jail and run freebsd-version -u, that will give you the version of the userland. That said, the MOTD should get updated with the version it is running, and that says it's 14.0-RELEASE. If both freebsd-version -u and MOTD says it's 14.0-RELEASE then that's the version.

Don't use iocage but it might have the same "problem" as bastille. With bastille you create a "bootstrap" jail with a certain version, 14.0-RELEASE for example. When you upgrade that release image ( bastille upgrade 14.0-RELEASE 14.1-RELEASE) it will be upgraded to 14.1-RELEASE, but the image is still named 14.0-RELEASE. Which is super confusing. So I never do a version upgrade of those images, I just bootstrap a new image with the new version and change the "base" jail mountpoint to point to the new release image.

 

[nimo]


root@webserver-01:~ # freebsd-version -u
13.1-RELEASE

Maybe it is actually my own mistake as I some year ago started an upgrade of the jail via iocage upgrade function but was running it remotely over ssh and connection got interrupted.

 

[SirDice]

Some things have changed with regards to the MOTD, it now gets generated from a template. Maybe you have a "fixed" /etc/motd that has the 14.0-RELEASE line stuck in it and set update_motd="NO" in rc.conf?

but was running it remotely over ssh and connection got interrupted.

I highly recommend using sysutils/screen or sysutils/tmux when doing this remotely. If you do the upgrade in a screen/tmux session you can simply pick it back up after you reconnect. It also won't break off the process, it'll continue running, when the connection is interrupted.