Best way to make a machine boot with or without a Internet connection

[RW]

On Thu, 6 Aug 2020 17:20:16 -0400
Aryeh Friedman wrote:

> Due to storm related damage my ISP went out for a few (12) hours
> earlier in the week and while I got it usable without a Internet
> connection by putting everything in my LAN in /etc/hosts (I also run
> a local_unbound --> local bind9 on my file server which I have
> created a zone file for the LAN machines also), but it was very slow
> in booting due to ntpdate, tomcat and sendmail not being to connect
> to the Internet for either forward or reverse DNS.   I don't want to
> turn these services off, but I want to be able to do a normal boot
> (no long hangs) if the ISP goes down again.  


What I used to do when I needed to use my computer without a network
connection is define an OFFLINE flag in rc.conf and then make the
setting of relevant "enable" flags conditional on that. If there's
anything you still need to run you could start it separately with
onestart later in the boot sequence.