From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Apr 27 21:19:28 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E473D106564A for ; Fri, 27 Apr 2012 21:19:28 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org) Received: from asbnvacz-mailrelay01.megapath.net (asbnvacz-mailrelay01.megapath.net [207.145.128.243]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A07948FC08 for ; Fri, 27 Apr 2012 21:19:28 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail1.sea5.speakeasy.net (mail1.sea5.speakeasy.net [69.17.117.39]) by asbnvacz-mailrelay01.megapath.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id AEAA8A73097 for ; Fri, 27 Apr 2012 17:19:21 -0400 (EDT) Received: (qmail 27697 invoked from network); 27 Apr 2012 21:19:21 -0000 Received: by simscan 1.4.0 ppid: 10648, pid: 25634, t: 0.1794s scanners: clamav: m: Received: from unknown (HELO be-well.ilk.org) ([66.92.78.145]) (envelope-sender ) by mail1.sea5.speakeasy.net (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for ; 27 Apr 2012 21:19:20 -0000 Received: from lowell-desk.lan (lowell-desk.lan [172.30.250.8]) by be-well.ilk.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EB84033C1D; Fri, 27 Apr 2012 17:19:14 -0400 (EDT) Received: by lowell-desk.lan (Postfix, from userid 1147) id 5BC0D39869; Fri, 27 Apr 2012 17:19:14 -0400 (EDT) From: Lowell Gilbert To: Frank Staals References: Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 17:19:14 -0400 In-Reply-To: (Frank Staals's message of "Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:35:10 +0200") Message-ID: <44ipgkg9f1.fsf@lowell-desk.lan> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.4 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: FreeBSD-Questions Subject: Re: Synchronising jails X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: FreeBSD-Questions List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 21:19:29 -0000 Frank Staals writes: > Hey Everyone, > > I'm looking for a way to synchronise two jails. More specifically, I > would like to keep/maintain an exact copy of a given jail. As an > example: Suppose I build a jail A on some system (in my particular case > build with ezjail) , and I copy the jail > into jail B on some other system (using tar, as is mentioned > here: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=17813). Now stuff > happens in Jail A, e.g. files change, new stuff is installed etc. I > would like to propagate these changes to jail B, but since the transfer > is over WAN I would like not to have to copy the entire jail again, just > the stuff that has changed since the last backup. It is safe to assume > nothing in Jail B changes: I basically want to maintain the exact copy > so if something would happen to the system running Jail A I can > immediately switch to jail B without much hassle. > > Normally I would say this a perfect use case for rsync. But as the > aforementioned thread mentions ``scp or similar wont work to copy a > jail'', and I consider rsync similar to scp, I am under the impression > that rsync would not be usable in this situation. Can anyone shed some > light on this, or suggest an alternative to synchronise the jails? I didn't don't know of any problem with using rsync (over ssh) for this, and after reading the thread to which you refer, I still don't. Set up a testbed using rsync and see if it works for you. If it doesn't, *then* you'll have something we can try to solve.