*BSD News Article 91871


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From: mark@troma.rv.tis.com (Mark Sienkiewicz)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc
Subject: Re: adding IP to netstart w/o rebooting
Date: 24 Mar 1997 11:26:25 -0500
Organization: A poorly-installed InterNetNews site
Lines: 34
Message-ID: <5h69vh$8a8@troma.rv.tis.com>
References: <jpdavidE7DB5n.9LB@netcom.com> <5gun6q$p4r@troma.rv.tis.com> <5gv1ti$pak@arrow.va.pubnix.com>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:6453

In article <5gv1ti$pak@arrow.va.pubnix.com>,
Kurt J. Lidl <lidl@va.pubnix.com> wrote:
>Mark Sienkiewicz <mark@troma.rv.tis.com> wrote:
>>
>>Nothing "looks at" netstart to know what it should do.  netstart
>>is just a script that gets run when the system boots.
>
>Technically, on BSD/OS systems, you are wrong.
>(Since this is a BSD/OS newsgroup, I think it is safe to draw
>this conclusion about choice of operating system.)

Perhaps I should have been a little more explicit.  What I mean to
say is that netstart is not a reference database - there is no
program that is constantly reading netstart to find out how
it should behave.

Contrast with some systems that have a database for system configuration:
the active-right-now configuration and the after-next-reboot configuration
are stored in the same place on those systems.  You can't change one
without changing the other.

>/etc/netstart sets various environmental variables that effect
>what daemons get started from later in /etc/rc, and more importantly,
>what arguments some of those programs get run with.
>
>In that sense, /etc/rc "looks at" the variables /etc/netstart
>sets and acts differently on the basis of those variables.
>
>To trace down all the changes that one might have to perform by
>hand after editting /etc/netstart, you'll have to grunge around
>in /etc/rc and /etc/rc.local as well.

Totally correct, of course.