# How to know if your jails are out of sync with the host system



## ironmikie (May 12, 2009)

Gents,

I have this little question about updating jails. I run a couple of jails on my system. After updating the world of the host system i nullfs mount /usr/src and /usr/obj to the jails to do an installworld on the jails.

If i don't remember myself which jail i already update and which not, how can i find this information. Running uname -a doesn't tell me anything cause there is only one kernel.

Is there an easy way to see if a jail is out of sync with the host system? I hope it's not just a matter of comparing versions of updated binaries.

It would be nice to have something like /etc/VERSION.

Thanks in advance


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## vivek (May 12, 2009)

Jail shares same kernel so yo cannot use differnet kernles. However, apps and releated libs can be upgraded as and when required.


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## DutchDaemon (May 12, 2009)

Vivek, I think you missed the point (twice) 

I agree that it would be nice to have a way to ask an application or some 'version file' "Which userland am I running at the moment?". If the host's kernel and the jail's userland are out of sync (say, the kernel was built May 1, and the userland was built Mar 1), there is no apparent way of knowing, because (as far as I know), uname is the only tool to get version information, but only from the kernel.


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## mousaka (May 12, 2009)

Some days ago I was wondering about the same issue. On the German forum http://www.bsdforen.de was a thread about the ability to use *ezjail-admin update -u* to upgrade jails.
Currently it seems, that freebsd-update (and therefor ezjail-admin) isn't able to to upgrade a directory (containing a jail) using the switches *-b* and/or *-d*.
There was no answer how to check the status of the userland inside a jail to check a successful upgrade.

Maybe some one here can give us a suggestion or is this a missing feature 

mousaka


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