4 ms·

I'd say jails aren't quite the same thing as Docker, they're much closer to LXC. They're really much closer to the "chroot on steroids" promise in that they're

by gh02t 11y ago

I'd say jails aren't quite the same thing as Docker, they're much closer to LXC. They're really much closer to the "chroot on steroids" promise in that they're basically lightweight virtual machines and are actually intended to be used as such. For instance jails usually run the full FreeBSD init system, while it's [sort of] discouraged to do that with Docker. On the other hand, I associate Docker more with the machinery it builds on top of containers. It's got all the snapshotting and build/distribution infrastructure. I think popular wisdom is also only to run a single process in a Docker container, whereas most people I've seen (myself included) treat jails a lot like a virtual machine. Jails are really popular amongst FreeBSD users and I use them a lot myself, but FreeBSD is nowhere near as popular as Linux, so that's one thing that held it back. Also, I think a big part of what has made Docker popular is all the deployment and distribution stuff on top of bare containers. The whole Docker philosophy of mostly immutable containers and microservices was what people wanted and FreeBSD jails aren't really intended for that.

the8472 11y ago
Another comparison point in linux land would be firejail https://firejail.wordpress.com/ https://firejail.wordpress.com/
SFjulie1 11y ago
Docker is marketing based. Jails are engineering based. It may make no difference to you, but it is the same difference between religion and science. You don't hide problem behind nice easy tools easily deployable, you do it the hard way. And as BSD says: jails are strong cages, but they are made of glasses, and when they break, it breaks badly. Engineers don't believe in reassuring technology, they control them and do not fear the ugly details, they are aware of the domain of validity, accept imperfections and do not hide them under stickers, propaganda and success stories. They do risk control, they right manuals and point out weaknesses. Jails user at least know this solution is a brass bullet and can fail you. And sometimes good users worth more than good technologies. A good soldier is valuable more than good weapons. That's why early adoptant of linux are going to BSD. To get the control back and go back to basic engineering approaches that are stable. I learnt in this process that you can learn from the mistakes that made linux fail the community : evangelization, consensus, philosophical approach, over-promising and being nice.
- icebraining 11y ago
  Yet: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docker https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docker
  - SFjulie1 11y ago
    it is in the ports, not in the system with a lot of other horrors like GNUTls, apache, gcc, mysql. Jails are in the system.
feld 11y ago
Jails don't have to run a whole OS (init et all) You can make lightweight (single process) jails. People have been doing this for years.
- gh02t 11y ago
  You definitely can! I was just trying to contrast one use case to Docker, since running a full init system is frowned on with Docker.

by gh02t 11y ago

the8472 11y ago

Another comparison point in linux land would be firejail https://firejail.wordpress.com/ https://firejail.wordpress.com/

SFjulie1 11y ago

Docker is marketing based. Jails are engineering based. It may make no difference to you, but it is the same difference between religion and science. You don't hide problem behind nice easy tools easily deployable, you do it the hard way. And as BSD says: jails are strong cages, but they are made of glasses, and when they break, it breaks badly. Engineers don't believe in reassuring technology, they control them and do not fear the ugly details, they are aware of the domain of validity, accept imperfections and do not hide them under stickers, propaganda and success stories. They do risk control, they right manuals and point out weaknesses. Jails user at least know this solution is a brass bullet and can fail you. And sometimes good users worth more than good technologies. A good soldier is valuable more than good weapons. That's why early adoptant of linux are going to BSD. To get the control back and go back to basic engineering approaches that are stable. I learnt in this process that you can learn from the mistakes that made linux fail the community : evangelization, consensus, philosophical approach, over-promising and being nice.

icebraining 11y ago
Yet: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docker https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docker
- SFjulie1 11y ago
  it is in the ports, not in the system with a lot of other horrors like GNUTls, apache, gcc, mysql. Jails are in the system.

feld 11y ago

Jails don't have to run a whole OS (init et all) You can make lightweight (single process) jails. People have been doing this for years.

gh02t 11y ago
You definitely can! I was just trying to contrast one use case to Docker, since running a full init system is frowned on with Docker.