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What's the difference between a Linux chroot jail and a FreeBSD jail? Are they synonyms in modern systems? Is one more secure than the other? Is one more flexible?
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Chroot jail is used to create a limited sandbox for a process to run in. This means a process cannot maliciously change data outside the prescribed directory tree. Another use for chroot jails is as a substitute for virtual machines.
What is a chroot Jail? A chroot on Unix operating systems is an operation that changes the apparent root directory for the current running process and its children. The programs that run in this modified environment cannot access the files outside the designated directory tree.
Jails build upon the chroot(2) concept, which is used to change the root directory of a set of processes. This creates a safe environment, separate from the rest of the system. Processes created in the chrooted environment can not access files or resources outside of it.
Security. FreeBSD jails are an effective way to increase the security of a server because of the separation between the jailed environment and the rest of the system (the other jails and the base system).
Actually, they have almost nothing in common.
A Linux "chroot environment" is just what / resolves to for a single process. Anything the process can do with access to that tree, it can do. So in general it can (e.g.) enumerate other processes on the system, and if it is a "root" process, it can still take over the machine.
A FreeBSD jail, on the other hand, is more like a virtual machine than a Linux chroot jail. It is a partition of the system with its own file system, user accounts, etc. The root user inside the jail only has administrative access to other objects in the jail; it cannot access anything outside of its jail.
I will not respond to the "more secure" or "more flexible" questions since those are weasel words. The mechanisms are just completely different by design, that's all.
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