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AppJail

AppJail is an open-source BSD-3 licensed framework entirely written in sh(1) and C to create isolated, portable and easy to deploy environments using FreeBSD jails that behaves like an application.

Its goals are to simplify life for sysadmins and developers by providing a unified interface that automates the jail workflow by combining the base FreeBSD tools.

AppJail offers simple ways to do complex things.

Features

• Easy to use.
• Parallel startup (Healthcheckers, Jails & NAT).
• UFS and ZFS support.
• RACCT/RCTL support.
• NAT support.
• Port expose - network port forwarding into jail.
• IPv4 and IPv6 support.
• DHCP and SLAAC support.
• Virtual networks - A jail can be on several virtual networks at the same time.
• Bridge support.
• VNET support.
• Deploy your applications much easier using Makejail!
• Netgraph support.
• LinuxJails support.
• Supports thin and thick jails.
• TinyJails - Experimental feature to create a very stripped down jail that is very useful to distribute.
• Startup order control - Using priorities and the boot flag makes management much easier.
• Jail dependency support.
• Initscripts - Make your jails interactive!
• Backup your jails using tarballs or raw images (ZFS only) with a single command.
• Modular structure - each command is a unique file that has its own responsibility in AppJail. This makes AppJail maintenance much easier.
• Table interface - many commands have a table-like interface, which is very familiar to many sysadmin tools.
• No databases - each configuration is separated in each entity (networks, jails, etc.) which makes maintenance much easier.
• Healthcheckers - Monitor your jails and make sure they are healthy!
• Images - Your jail in a single file!
• DEVFS support - Dynamic device management!
• OCI support - Containers everywhere!
• ...

Documentation

AppJail Documentation

Comparing AppJail

How does AppJail compare to other FreeBSD jail frameworks?

Support

Need help using AppJail?

Design decisions

Characters Allowed:

• Jail Name, Network Name, Custom Stage and Volume Name: Although jail names can use any character (except .), AppJail does not use any possible character. Valid regex is ^[a-zA-Z0-9_][a-zA-Z0-9_-]*$.
• Interface Name: For interface names, the regex is ^[a-zA-Z0-9_][a-zA-Z0-9_.]*$.
• JNG: For jng, the regex is ^[a-zA-Z_]+[a-zA-Z0-9_]*$ and for its links the regex is ^[0-9a-zA-Z_]+$.

AppJail tries to not modify the host:

Such as making changes to rc.conf(5), sysctl.conf(5), the firewall configuration file, etc. It is preferable that the user is aware of such changes, this simplifies a lot.

AppJail tries not to be interactive

AppJail tries not to play with jails created not by itself

AppJail tries not to automate everything:

Instead of using one command to do a lot of work, it is preferable to combine small commands. A perfect example is appjail makejail which leaves the responsibility to the main commands.

AppJail is not focused on building software:

There are very interesting projects like poudriere or synth that can also create a custom repository. Use that custom repository in a jail created by AppJail to install your ports.

TODO

• Add support for ipfw and ipfilter.
• Although Makejails can be retrieved anywhere by the methods described in INCLUDE, a centralized repository to easily retrieve generic Makejails is useful. This can be done on Github or Gitlab. (See https://github.com/AppJail-makejails).
• Create Makejails for applications. It is a difficult job to do alone, but with many people it is feasible. (Done using the centralized repository, of course this is in progress anyway).
• rc scripts to start resource limitation rules, nat for jails and to expose ports. appjail quick and appjail-config do this job, but it can be useful to spend less time starting/stopping jails.
• Implement a supervisor. (Done using a similar way to supervise jails and their services named Healthcheckers).
• Add option to appjail config to check if the parameters of a template are valid for jail(8). (Done with the new tool, appjail-config)
• Implement all jail(8) parameters in appjail quick.
• The jng script is useful, but AppJail must create the Netgraph nodes in the same way as bridges and epairs.
• Man pages.

Contributing

If you have found a bug, have an idea or need help, use the issue tracker. Of course, PRs are welcome.