From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Oct 15 12:50:45 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from smtp10.atl.mindspring.net (smtp10.atl.mindspring.net [207.69.200.246]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 38A3737B66F for ; Sun, 15 Oct 2000 12:50:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from jayk3 (user-2ini8bs.dialup.mindspring.com [165.121.33.124]) by smtp10.atl.mindspring.net (8.9.3/8.8.5) with SMTP id PAA30046; Sun, 15 Oct 2000 15:50:33 -0400 (EDT) From: jay.krell@cornell.edu Message-ID: <003f01c036e0$ff075a20$8001a8c0@jayk3> Reply-To: To: "Bill Schoolcraft" Cc: Subject: Re: FreeBSD 3.x->4.1, my experience, Samba, dhcpd, ppp, nat, dns,named Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2000 12:49:03 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3612.1700 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3612.1700 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG >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. 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