questionable feature- rcvar woes

[Milan Obuch]

On Wednesday 28 November 2007 20:16:51 Andrei Kolu wrote:
> Something is wrong with rcvar or I am just blatant.
>
> For example:
>
> 1) Enable powerd in rc.conf
> # echo 'enable_powerd="YES"' >> /etc/rc.conf
> 2) Launch powerd
> # /etc/rc.d/powerd start
> Starting powerd.
> 3) And stopping it.
> # /etc/rc.d/powerd stop
> Stopping powerd.
>

Agree - everything just fine.

> Everything looks fine, but when I disable powerd in rc.conf then problem
> arise.
>
> 1) Disable powerd in rc.conf- comment it out.
> # enable_powerd="YES"
> 2) Stop powerd
> # /etc/rc.d/powerd stop
> ...silence- nothing in logs either.
>

Stop for a moment - enable_powerd means actually 'enable action carried 
by /etc/rc.d/powerd script', using this semantics actually explains all 
details. Or you could treat it as a stack of a sort, reversing order to 2) 1) 
just produces desired output.

> What? Not even a warning message and powerd is actually running- why I have
> to reboot to disable it? I know that I can stop it by enabling it in
> rc.conf but what the point? Same problem when I want to start some service
> without appropriate line in rc.conf. I'd prefer to see somekind of warning
> about misconfigured rc.conf or at least information about what's going on
> in reality.
>

I hope my explanation above suffices. I was hit by this too, but rc.d scripts 
behavior is well designed and understandable. If, for some reason, you are 
still hit with described behavior, there is a save rope - /etc/rc.d/powerd 
forcestop will stop powerd even if there is no enable var in rc.conf.

Regards,
Milan

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