did someone take over jailmaker maintenance though? i too used to use jailmaker, but because back then the dev decided to quit (not complaining. very much appreciated the work he had done) and the fact that truenas fangtooth now supported native docker support (so you could host docker containers without going through vm to do so), so i switched to that.
Things i missed about jailmaker
pros
- easy to start/stop all the docker containers with 1 single command. making it easier to then backup docker config when no docker containers are actively running
- you can update or downgrade the docker. in one previous incident, there was a bug where a certain docker version for the container wasn’t working, so the solution was to temporarily downgrade till a newer docker version got release which eventually did. if not mistaken, you have to stick with the docker version bundled with truenas take it or leave it.
- jailmaker was easy to delete docker and re-create from scratch. if you wanted to experiment and do a quick clean slate
- had the flexibility to install whatever you needed. don’t like docker? you can install something else.
- want to update or install something and be able to roll back without harming your truenas? you can do. If you mess up you can always delete that jail and start from scratch.
In summary. jailmaker was a fun flexible playground for me to experiment, and also for practical use to run docker containers i actually use. and making backups easy.
cons
- initial setup a hassle. though is doable if you follow captain stux’s guide that explains many things about the setup.
- you have to constantly keep things up to date yourself for the backend stuff. the onus is on you.
- jailmaker no longer maintained last i checked. maybe something changed, do let me know
- though graphic card support was possible last i tried, the truenas fangtooth made adding graphic card much easier using their truenas UI. there is a toggle in the setting. much easier than setting it up in jailmaker.
So anyway, with fangtooth, what i did is more or less what captain stux mentions in migrating to the truenas native docker support
i just point the storage for config to a fixed location, making backups for docker configs much easier if they have a fixed custom path.
The main docker container i setup this way was dockge. Because once that was done, then i only used dockge to deploy and manage dockers. Only for certain dockers which i had trouble deploying, would i simply used the truenas docker listings to deploy them, since it takes a few clicks to deploy rather than mess too much with docker compose, or i used a docker container image that doesn’t work, but truenas docker images just work fine.
PS: docker native began in electric eel. just said fangtooth simply because that’s what i’m using now. but the adoption began earlier.