Pkgbase

Pkgbase is the new method for managing the base system on a FreeBSD host or jail. It is considered experimental for 15.0-RELEASE, but will be made the default for version 16.0-RELEASE and above.

Bootstrap

To bootstrap a release using pkgbase, run bastille bootstrap --pkgbase RELEASE. For version 14, it is not supported. For version 15 it is optional, but for version 16 and above, it is the default method of bootstrapping a release.

To customize the ‘pkgbase package set’ used for bootstrapping, change the ‘bastille_pkgbase_packages’ setting located in /usr/local/etc/bastille/bastille.conf. See also Configuration.

Update

To update a release created with pkgbase, simply run bastille update RELEASE as you would with legacy releases.

To update a thick jail, run bastille update TARGET as you would with legacy releases.

To update a thin jail, you must update the release that it is based on.

Upgrade

Upgrading is not supported for releases. See bastille bootstrap RELEASE to bootstrap the required release.

Upgrading is supported for both thin and thick jails. Thin jails will have their mount points adjusted, and you will need to run bastille etcupdate on them when upgrading from a major release to a newer major release. For example, 15.0-RELEASE to 16.0-RELEASE.

Converting to Pkgbase

Thick jails that are running legacy releases will have to be converted to pkgbase before attempting to upgrade to 16.0-RELEASE. This can be done in two ways.

Enter the jail, fetch the pkgbasify script, and run it.

fetch https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/pkgbasify/raw/refs/heads/main/pkgbasify.lua
chmod +x pkgbasify.lua
./pkgbasify.lua

Fetch the pkgbasify script and run it from the host using the --jail TARGET option.

fetch https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/pkgbasify/raw/refs/heads/main/pkgbasify.lua
chmod +x pkgbasify.lua
./pkgbasify.lua --jail TARGET

Converting a release to pkgbase can be done the same way, but we recommend simply destroying and re-bootstrapping it using pkgbase. This will not work if you are running thin jails based on the release in question. In such a case, follow step 2 above.