IGIgorPartola·Dec 1, 2025
Specifically I was talking about this not being ready for prime time: https://github.com/samuelkarp/runj
In A Love Letter to FreeBSDsamuelkarp
runj
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samuelkarp / runj
runj
runj is an experimental, proof-of-concept OCI-compatible runtime for FreeBSD jails.
9Distinct people
11Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
673GitHub stars
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What it is
runj is an experimental, proof-of-concept OCI-compatible runtime for FreeBSD jails.
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Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
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Mentions over time
HN mentions by year11 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2021-03-16 20:20:48 UTC to 2025-12-01 00:22:43 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 3 | 2 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
What Hacker News says
11 sourcesFYI, we just merged FreeBSD jail support into the OCI runtime spec v1.3[1]. There is already at least one implementation of it[2] as well.
[1]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/1286
[2]: https://github.com/samuelkarp/runj
In Immutable Software Deploys Using ZFS Jails on FreeBSDa couple projects underway for containers, still wip but promising.
https://hackmd.io/7BIT_khIRQyPAe4EdiigHg
https://github.com/samuelkarp/runj
In HelloSystem: A graphical OS built on FreeBSD> it's a shame that docker is built around linux
There is some interesting work happening to get an OCI-compatible runtime working
https://github.com/samuelkarp/runj
In FreeBSD Experimenting with a Port of Nvidia's Linux Open DRM Kernel DriverShout out to https://github.com/samuelkarp/runj which aims to provide OCI compatible runtime for FreeBSD jails. We are working on a Jails based sandbox implementation for running OCaml builds on FreeBSD, https://github.com/ocurrent/obuilder. If runj gets more support then it would be a good alternative to the various iocage/ezjail/etc solutions or the raw Jails implementation we have right now.
In FreeBSD Jails Containers> VM's disk is a zfs filesystem on the host, it makes snapshotting (edit- ok maybe not, see below) and managing it super easy!
I think you mean that it's a ZFS volume? Although it should be possible to export a filesystem to a guest over NFS (or I guess 9p), but I haven't run into a lot of discussion or gotten around to testing it myself...
> It would be really cool if there were tools that brought them in line with docker, in terms of easy deployment and provisioning of new jails/vms. If I didn't have so many damn project ideas already...
My dream would be to see https://github.com/samuelkarp/runj polished and docker+containerd+runj made to work as the way to run the docker frontend with jails as the backend.
In Fun with FreeBSD: Your First Linux Guest – Running in Production with ScissorsThe maddening thing is that Docker should be a lot more portable than it is; the actual specs and architecture need something to provide the primitives, but it doesn't have to be runc + Linux namespaces. Sure, the MacOS doesn't have those primitives, but ex. FreeBSD and Illumos both do. And, in fairness, with runj (https://github.com/samuelkarp/runj#runj) we might finally be moving in that direction.
In Documenting our migration to DockerHave you seen https://github.com/samuelkarp/runj ? I have some hopes for that as the glue to do orchestration on jails.
In As a longtime BSD user, I have my doubts about our futureAn experimental, proof-of-concept OCI-compatible runtime for FreeBSD jails
1 points · Open discussionProof of Concept OCI Compatible Runtime for FreeBSD Jails
1 points · Open discussionRunj: Experimental, proof-of-concept OCI-compatible runtime for FreeBSD jails
192 points · Open discussion