Rereading /etc/rc.conf without reboot

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January 5th, 2002, 09:30 AM

munkfish

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Rereading /etc/rc.conf without reboot

Is this possible? Just curious.

Thanks in advance.

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January 5th, 2002, 03:21 PM

freebsd

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Technically it's possible but why do you need to do it? All those /etc/rc.* files are to be read on bootup/shutdown globally. If you have particular daemon/service you need to start without reboot, why can't you alter your /etc/rc.conf so it will start automatically on next reboot, then start it manually? Any service/daemon in /etc/rc.conf can be started manually anyway.

Like mounting a NFS share, you can alter /etc/fstab + reboot. You also can mount/umount it manually.

January 5th, 2002, 05:32 PM

munkfish

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Sure. It was this line in particular:

Code:

gateway_enable="YES"

Would this need a reboot for the config to be initialized. Sorry should have posted that in the first place.

As it is that's the least of my worries - configuring ppp / default routes is being a pain at the moment and the only official PPP guide I've read so far - http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.IS...ork.html#AEN825 - is incomplete (at that fragment, the exact point I'm having trouble with;\)

Not to worry, I've to go through the ppp man page again tomorrow and read up more on default routes I think, that seems to be the problem (a link is established correctly to the ISP server, but no route is available from my box to anything outside the ISP server at present).

January 5th, 2002, 05:46 PM

freebsd

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>> gateway_enable="YES
>> Would this need a reboot for the config to be initialized

No. In /etc/rc.network:

Code:

	case ${gateway_enable} in
	[Yy][Ee][Ss])
		echo -n ' IP gateway=YES'
		sysctl -w net.inet.ip.forwarding=1 >/dev/null
		;;
	esac

So you can just run the sysctl command. rc.conf is just a centralized config file for rc* scripts to read on bootup/shutdown to help administrators to automate all the tasks.

>> but no route is available from my box

Sorry I can't help you with PPP since I'd never make a decision to join an ISP that supports PPP. So are you saying if you add the default gateway manually the problem would be solved? Well, I am sure there must an appropriate way to do this. Yet, you also can write a simple script to add a default gateway and exec it when your NIC is up.

January 5th, 2002, 06:23 PM

munkfish

funky munky

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Thanks for the rc.network pointer.

>>Sorry I can't help you with PPP since I'd never make a decision
>> to join an ISP that supports PPP.
Unfortunately here in the UK PPP via a 56k modem is the only option I currently have - ADSL is being rolled out here soon though and at that point I will upgrade.

>>So are you saying if you add the default gateway manually
>> the problem would be solved?
I can't say with certainty at this point. I'll know more tomorrow after reading up a bit more.

Thanks for your time.

January 6th, 2002, 04:49 PM

munkfish

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I post this message from my windows machine, connecting to the internet via the freebsd PPP connection! As such, the PPP problem has been resolved (it was a problem with routing).

Out of interest how would one manually make changes to the routing table in FreeBSD? Can it be done by ifconfig (for example to specify a default route)?

I've started writing the missing sections from the PPP Pedantic Primer for the FreeBSD Doc Project as well, so hopefully others don't get the shock I did when I discovered sections were missing from it!

January 6th, 2002, 05:03 PM

freebsd

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>> Can it be done by ifconfig

Use route instead.

Rereading /etc/rc.conf without reboot

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