when the sshd hits the fan

[Doug Hardie]

> On 23 September 2015, at 01:44, Eugene M. Zheganin <emz at norma.perm.ru> wrote:
> 
> Hi.
> 
> I'm trying to understand why the sshd still starts after local daemons,
> out-of-the-box, and what it takes to make this extremely vital service
> to start before non-system (local) ones. I bet I'm not the first one to
> ask, so why isn't this already done ? Seems quite easy for me.

The fix is quite simple:  Add

# BEFORE: mail

to /etc/rc.d/sshd

I tried to submit a PR on that about a year ago, but it never seemed to make it into the PR system.  Many of my servers are remote and if there is an issue with a port, I still need a way into the system other than driving for hours.  This works.  Sshd is started early in the sequence and I can at least ssh into the server.  It won’t help though if there is a syntax error in /etc/rc.conf.  Those are pretty much fatal.