🟠 High   ⏱ 5–30 min  Last verified: 20 May 2026
Affected versions: FreeBSD 13

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents
  1. Symptom & Impact
  2. Environment & Reproduction
  3. Root Cause Analysis
  4. Quick Triage
  5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
  6. Solution – Primary Fix
  7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
  8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
  9. Rollback Plan
  10. Prevention & Hardening
  11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
  12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

Jails stay down after reboot, interrupting isolated services and automation jobs.

Environment & Reproduction

Common after storage layout changes or moved jail root paths.

service jail status
cat /etc/jail.conf
jls -v

Root Cause Analysis

Configured path directives reference missing or permission-denied mount points.

Quick Triage

Validate jail names, root paths, and startup enablement.

sysrc jail_enable
service jail onestatus
ls -ld /usr/jails/*

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Run dry parse and inspect mount/fstab interactions for jail roots.

jail -cvf /etc/jail.conf
cat /etc/fstab
mount | grep /usr/jails
Illustrative mockup for freebsd-13 — terminal_or_shell
jail.conf parsing and path checks — Illustrative mockup — Progressive Robot

Solution – Primary Fix

Correct jail root path mappings and restart jail service.

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vi /etc/jail.conf
service jail restart
jls
Illustrative mockup for freebsd-13 — logs_or_journal
jail startup success after config correction — Illustrative mockup — Progressive Robot

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Temporarily start affected jail manually for isolated debugging.

jail -c name=webjail path=/usr/jails/webjail host.hostname=webjail.example persist

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

All configured jails appear in jls and services are reachable.

jls -n
service jail status
jexec webjail uname -a

Rollback Plan

Restore prior jail.conf and service definitions if new layout introduces regressions.

cp -a /etc/jail.conf.bak /etc/jail.conf
service jail restart

Prevention & Hardening

Use templated jail definitions and preflight checks before restart.

jail -n -f /etc/jail.conf

Associated with devfs ruleset gaps and VNET bridge misconfiguration.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for FreeBSD 13.

View all FreeBSD 13 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

FreeBSD jail management and jail.conf syntax documentation.

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