Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 16:12:36 -0500 (EST) From: Alan Bawden <Alan@LCS.MIT.EDU> To: gjb@acm.org Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: messing with /etc/rc.conf Message-ID: <14Jan1999.130537.Alan@LCS.MIT.EDU> In-Reply-To: <19990114081649.4801.qmail@alice.gba.oz.au> (message from Greg Black on Thu, 14 Jan 1999 18:16:48 %2B1000) References: <8Jan1999.042549.Alan@LCS.MIT.EDU> <19990108192746.B63511@scientia.demon.co.uk> <9Jan1999.220116.Alan@LCS.MIT.EDU> <19990110041754.A94335@scientia.demon.co.uk> <14Jan1999.003932.Alan@LCS.MIT.EDU> <19990114081649.4801.qmail@alice.gba.oz.au>
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Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 18:16:48 +1000
From: Greg Black <gjb@acm.org>
> OK, so I've now established that the first guy to try answering my
> question didn't actually know that something other than `sh'
> occasionally reads and re-writes the contents of /etc/rc.conf.
No, you've established that you asked an ambiguous question.
I have included my original question below. I confess it seems very clear
to me. The only fault I can find is that I neglected to mention that I was
running version 2.2.6.
It was not clear in the original that the actual file was modified,
I wrote: "something will occasionally re-write this to read". I intended
the word "re-write this" to mean "modified the file" -- sorry if that
wasn't clear. (No irony here, I really -am- sorry -- if I had thought of
that mis-interpretation of my words, I would certainly have written it
differently.)
rather it seemed that some process that parsed the file was
making a mistake -- but since only sh parses the file in normal
operation, there was a mystery.
Since I had observed that something -did- occasionally modify the file, I
just wanted to know what that was. I wrote my question under the
assumption that somebody on freebsd-questions would actually know what that
program was, when it ran, and how it parsed the file.
And in fact, to someone who knows what program it is that mungs rc.conf, my
two questions were no-brainers -- the answers are: (1) /stand/sysinstall,
and (2) rc.conf.local is not touched.
I expected to get a few bogus answers from people who thought that rc.conf
was just a shell script, but I figured that eventually my question would be
noticed by someone who actually knew what the program was. After waiting
six days, I tried again. At the start I tried to remind people that I
wasn't just confused by shell syntax. My reference to the previous fellow
who tried to help me out was not intended to be offensive, just a statement
of fact. He tried to be helpful, for which I am grateful, but ultimately
he admitted that he had no idea what program it was that modified it.
... lots of people would have instantly said: "either some malicious
human used an editor on the file or some ill-advised human used some
other program that felt it had the right to modify the file -- find out
which it was and don't let it happen again."
Well, something like that. Given that the program in question was written
by Jordan Hubbard, they probably would have left out the "ill-advised"
part.
----- Begin -----
Message-Id: <8Jan1999.042549.Alan@LCS.MIT.EDU>
From: Alan Bawden <Alan@LCS.MIT.EDU>
Sender: Alan@LCS.MIT.EDU
To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: messing with /etc/rc.conf
There is a comment at the front of /etc/rc.conf that says:
# All arguments must be in double or single quotes.
It's not clear exactly what the restriction here is, but I recently learned
that if rc.conf contains the following:
ntpdate_flags="-bs $(awk '$1 == "server" || $1 == "peer" {print $2}' /etc/ntp.conf)"
something will occasionally re-write this to read:
ntpdate_flags="-bs $(awk '$1 == "
So I have two questions:
1. What is it that makes this change. And what exactly are the rules it
applies when parsing/rewriting the file?
2. If I move the setting of ntpdate_flags into /etc/rc.conf.local, will
whatever this thing is leave it alone there?
----- End -----
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