On June 11 2011 the Qjail utility was committed to the FreeBSD port environment.
The qjail utility is used to deploy small or large numbers of jails quickly.
The qjail utility uses the jail(8) method of jail definition and start/stop control.
Qjail [ q = quick ] is a 4th generation wrapper for the basic chroot jail
system that includes security and performance enhancements. Plus a new
level of "user friendliness" enhancements dealing with deploying just a
few jails or large jail environments consisting of 100's of jails.
Qjail eliminates all the jail rc.conf configuration statements normally required to
define jails using the "jail" command. Qjail requires no knowledge of the
jail command usage.
Qjail automatically populates each newly created jail with the host files necessary
to gain network access from the jails first start.
It uses "nullfs" for read-only system binaries, sharing one copy of
them with all the jails.
Uses "mdconfig" to create sparse image jails. Sparse image jails
provide a method to limit the total disk space a jail can consume,
while only occupying the physical disk space of the sum size of the
files in the image jail.
Ability to assign IP address with their network device name, so aliases are
auto created on jail start and auto removed on jail stop.
Ability to create "ZONE"s of identical qjail systems, each with
their own group of jails.
Ability to designate a portion of the jail name as a group prefix so
the command being executed will apply to only those jail names
matching that prefix.
Qjail reduces the complexities of jail deployments to the novice
level. Qjail has a fully documented manpage written for easy comprehension.
Details are given to felicitate the use of qjail's capabilities to
the fullest extent possible.
The port make files and the package file can be downloaded from here:
This Qjail Documentation is in public domain. This content may be reproduced,
in any form or by any means, and used by all without permission in writing from the author.