Odd behaviour related to rc.conf

[gman88]

I'm about 4 weeks into my FreeBSD experience, from Linux, and this is probably an ignorant question.....but here goes. I had some scripts which built an older version of Apache (1.3.41) and - basically because it's something that I'm familiar with - I built it with my old Slackware scripts. I absolutely need certain things compiled with Apache and I'm not comfortable enough with FreeBSD, yet, to just use ports. At any rate, I own valid, third-party signed certificates but as I was building this thing I had not installed them. I built vsftpd, too. In /etc/rc.conf I had added enable_apache="YES" and enable_vsftpd="YES". I had made corresponding start files (apache.sh and vsftpd.sh) at /usr/local/etc/rc.d. The odd dimension, here, is that everything had worked for a week or so. I added a mail server and I cannot imagine that, somehow, that has anything to with this. But, last night vsftpd would not run from the call in /etc/rc.conf. Of course, since it's an ssl web server with no certificates (well, it was....) there was a request at boot time to enter a password. All of a sudden, this seemed to be interfering with vsftpd starting. As soon as I generated some self-signed certificates as a temporary fix, vsftpd starts at boot time.

It's simply odd to me that (1) this worked for a couple of weeks without the certificates, and,(2) now it doesn't. The certificates have to be installed, anyway - but could anyone tell me why the request to enter my password for Apache, at boot, would suddenly bugger the vsftpd start call......

Things like this - totally inconsequential, I suppose - drive me nuts....

Thanks for any input.

 

[SirDice]

In /etc/rc.conf I had added enable_apache="YES" and enable_vsftpd="YES".

Wrong way around. It's:

apache_enable="YES"
vsftp_enable="YES"

 

[gman88]

I think that I posted wrong..

Thanks - I'll check it, but, I think that I just typed that post incorrectly....

 

[wblock@]

I'm about 4 weeks into my FreeBSD experience, from Linux, and this is probably an ignorant question.....but here goes. I had some scripts which built an older version of Apache (1.3.41) and - basically because it's something that I'm familiar with - I built it with my old Slackware scripts. I absolutely need certain things compiled with Apache and I'm not comfortable enough with FreeBSD, yet, to just use ports.

This is a recipe for future pain. There are three things about ports that are often overlooked but really important:

1. Consistency: config files go in LOCALBASE/etc, binaries (usually) go in LOCALBASE/bin, and so on.
2. Patches specifically for FreeBSD. Maybe needed, maybe just nice, but the porter went to the effort of putting them in for a reason.
3. Deinstalling/upgrading. You can deinstall a port and all the files are gone. There won't be forgotten little files hanging around taking up disk space and interfering with the new version.

... In /etc/rc.conf I had added enable_apache="YES" and enable_vsftpd="YES". I had made corresponding start files (apache.sh and vsftpd.sh) at /usr/local/etc/rc.d. The odd dimension, here, is that everything had worked for a week or so. I added a mail server and I cannot imagine that, somehow, that has anything to with this. But, last night vsftpd would not run from the call in /etc/rc.conf. Of course, since it's an ssl web server with no certificates (well, it was....) there was a request at boot time to enter a password. All of a sudden, this seemed to be interfering with vsftpd starting. As soon as I generated some self-signed certificates as a temporary fix, vsftpd starts at boot time.

This probably falls under the "consistency" entry above. You didn't show your scripts, but I'd guess some kind of race condition, or maybe a stale pid file or lock or something like that. Using the port rc.d files is not a guarantee, but it's a pretty safe bet.