Best practices

These are some generic guidelines for working with iocell managed jails.

Use PF as a module

This is the default setting in the GENERIC kernel. There seems to be a VNET bug which is only triggered when PF is directly compiled into the kernel.

Always tag your jails and templates!

This will help you avoid mistakes and easily identify jails.

Set the notes property

Set the notes property to something meaningful, especially for templates and jails you might use only once in a while.

VNET

VNET will give you more control and isolation. Also allows to run per jail firewalls. See known issues about VNET.

Don’t overuse resource limiting!

Unless really needed, let the OS decide how to do it best. Set limits with the “log action” before enforcing “deny”. This way you can check the logs before creating any performance bottlenecks.

Discover templates!

Templates will make your life easy, try them!

Use the restart command instead of start/stop

If you wish to restart a jail use the restart command which performs a soft restart and it leaves the VNET stack alone, less stressful for the kernel and you.

Check your firewall rules

When using IPFW inside a VNET jail put firewall_enable="YES" firewall_type="open" into /etc/rc.conf for a start. This way you can exclude the firewall from blocking you right from the beginning! Lock it down once you’ve tested everything. Also check PF firewall rules on the host if you happen to mix both.

Get rid of old snapshots

Remove snapshots you don’t need, especially from jails where data is changing a lot!

Use the chroot sub-command

In case you need to access or modify files in a template or a jail which is in a stopped state, use iocell chroot UUID | TAG. This way you don’t need to spin up the jail or convert the template.