Re: Newbie

Nasir Mahmood wrote:
> Hello,
> I am new to Freebsd 4.9
> 
> Have been in Linux Since last 4 years  and just trying Freebsd for 
> experience.
> I need some details to work with FreeBSD.
> 
> Where all daemons are started from, like all daemon in Linux (Redhat) 
> are mostly started from /etc/rc.d/
> Where I can add/removed packages.
> 
> If let say I install  sendmail .Where should I place it's startup script 
> so that  at every reboot the sendmail must be started  and runningt.
> 
> Where are the scripts to run/stop server daemon. I need this .

In FreeBSD, there is a clear separation between the "base system"
and "additional packages."

The base system is configured by editing the /etc/rc.conf file.
The values in /etc/rc.conf override the corresponding values
in /etc/defaults/rc.conf.  For example, to enable sendmail
(which is part of the base system), you can add this line
to /etc/rc.conf:
     sendmail_enable="YES"

If you read through /etc/defaults/rc.conf, you'll find many
such settings (including default flags for many utilities,
variables for overriding which program is used, etc.).
There are scripts for the servers in the base system, but
it is very unusual to edit them in any way.

Additional packages (handled through the pkg_* tools or
compiled from the "ports collection" always go into /usr/local.
The system startup scripts by default run every script in
/usr/local/etc/rc.d with a 'start' argument.  You can
place scripts there for custom services.

The FreeBSD handbook (available online at www.freebsd.org)
has very detailed instructions for many of these tasks.

FreeBSD is different than Linux in many respects, but I think
you'll like it.

Welcome aboard, and feel free to ask questions.

Note that the "freebsd-questions" mailing list is generally
a better place to ask this type of question.  This mailing
list "freebsd-current" is for people who are running the current
development version of FreeBSD and has a lot of discussion
of development issues that you may not want to worry about
just yet.

Tim Kientzle