Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2000 12:49:03 -0700 From: jay.krell@cornell.edu To: "Bill Schoolcraft" <bill@wiliweld.com> Cc: <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: FreeBSD 3.x->4.1, my experience, Samba, dhcpd, ppp, nat, dns,named Message-ID: <003f01c036e0$ff075a20$8001a8c0@jayk3>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
>Bill Schoolcraft
>...
>My utmost thanks for the full email you sent, I am using *BSD's in
>my house and work now in conjunction to the existing Linux machines
>and when I went looking for the (Linux) /etc/rc.d/rc.local all I
>came up with was rc.conf.
>
>Your mention of /etc/rc.local made me read the manpage for rc.conf
>and I have to ask if you mean the file /etc/rc.local or as the
>manpage states, /etc/rc.conf.local ?
There was no mistake. I meant /etc/rc.local.
cd /etc
grep rc.local * | more
There is also such a thing as rc.conf.local, nonexistant by default I think.
grep rc.conf.local * | more
I think that turns up empty.
cd /etc/defaults
grep rc.conf.local * | more
That does not turn up empty, I didn't track it down completely.
man rc
references both rc.local and rc.conf.local.
I'm out of patience for reading it though..
>(A) Is there a difference ?
Yes. I don't know exactly, but rc.conf.local probably is supposed to look
something like rc.conf. Have simple:
foo_enable="yes"
bar_enable="no"
xxx_flags="-a -b"
commands whereas /etc/rc and /etc/rc.local are fairly open ended. I also
think that rc.conf.local is not considered obsolete but rc.local is.
<grumble>I'm sure somone (or some *nix flavor/distro) has files named like
local.rc or conf.rc.local for some reason.. Every combination of some
strings appears to mean something in *nix..
>(B) Is it used as a "last chance" file to add stuff as has been the
>/etc/rc.d/rc.local in Linux ? (which causes big debates).
Yes, I'd say so. More importantly, /etc/rc.local is considered obsolete, in
comments in /etc/rc.
Realize that this is all largely about convention. You can do pretty
arbitrary things in pretty arbitrary files in pretty arbitrary places. But
something starts the whole process and there is a "framework" where certain
files, both statically defined like "etc/rc.conf" and dynamically like
"/usr/local/etc/rc.d/*.sh" get run automatically.
At the very least, any file that by default has lots of stuff in it, you
don't have to edit. It will run some other file that by default is empty or
small or nonexistant.
This all reminds me autoexec.bat/config.sys. Easy to apply a text editor to,
somewhat easy to backup/restore/deploy, but maybe too many files in too many
directories, hard to apply a friendly setup or gui too.. meanwhile the
Windows registry ought to be broken up into multiple files.. at least named
like "critical for system boot and very machine specific" "network options"
"user specific ie5 autocompletes" "window positions and other
nonessentials".. which is just to say I'm very unhappy with both of the
extremes I've used...
..Jay
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?003f01c036e0$ff075a20$8001a8c0>