# Running a jail with sysvipc_allow="YES"



## japoc (Nov 30, 2015)

Hi,

I have to run many instances of PostgreSQL in different jails. And it seems it's not currently possible to run PostgreSQL in a jail without setting sysvipc_allow="YES" in the jail config.

(Or is it? I stumbled onto this: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=48471 where someone is apparently proposing a patch implementing private IPC for every jail. This would be completely awesome if this was added to the base system but it doesn't seem to be the case.)

Well, so, I have to use many jails with sysvipc_allow="YES". If I had the choice, I would choose to use MySQL to avoid all this, but unfortunately, this is not an option for this project.

I don't really understand how SysV IPC work and what's its relation to jails. I'd like to understand this. And I'd like to know what I can do to minimize the risks of crashes, races, and security issues (even if I understand it can't be perfect).

I read some posts saying shared memory has some relation with a process's owner's UID. I have no clue how that works. Do I have to make sure all the UIDs in each jails and in the host are different? For example, should I give each root user in each jail a different UID? Would that even work without the system crashing?
I read some people set a distinct port for the PostgreSQL server of each jail. Why do they do that?

I hope I didn't ask too many question. I'd be happy to read any view you have on this.


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## quintessence (Nov 30, 2015)

Hello,
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/arch-handbook/jail-restrictions.html
Also you can run all your instances in only single jail.


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## junovitch@ (Nov 30, 2015)

The technical background is explained in quintessence's link above.  The end user visible aspect of this is you will have to ensure that the pgsql user's UID in each jail is unique rather than using the default of 70.  Else with SysV IPC the different PostgreSQL databases all using 70 will conflict even though they are in jails because of the current limitation of how SyS V IPC is implemented.


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