Linux® uses the SysV init system, whereas FreeBSD uses the
traditional BSD-style init(8). Under the BSD-style init(8)
there are no run-levels and no /etc/inittab
,
instead startup is controlled by the rc(8) utility. The
/etc/rc
script reads
/etc/defaults/rc.conf
and
/etc/rc.conf
to determine which services are to be
started. The specified services are then started by running the
corresponding service initialization scripts located in
/etc/rc.d/
and
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/
. These scripts are similar to
the scripts located in /etc/init.d/
on Linux®
systems.
Services are enabled by specifying
ServiceName_enable="YES"
in
/etc/rc.conf
(rc.conf(5)). Take a look at
/etc/defaults/rc.conf
for the system defaults,
these default settings are overridden by settings in
/etc/rc.conf
. Also, when installing additional
applications be sure to review the documentation to determine how to
enable any associated services.
The following snippet from /etc/rc.conf
enables
sshd(8) and Apache 2.2. It also
specifies that Apache should be started
with SSL.
# enable SSHD sshd_enable="YES" # enable Apache with SSL apache22_enable="YES" apache22_flags="-DSSL"
Once a service has been enabled in /etc/rc.conf
,
the service can be started from the command line (without rebooting the
system):
#
/etc/rc.d/sshd start
If a service has not been enabled it can be started from the
command line using forcestart
:
#
/etc/rc.d/sshd forcestart
All FreeBSD documents are available for download at http://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/
Questions that are not answered by the
documentation may be
sent to <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org>.
Send questions about this document to <freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org>.