On Aug 5,  4:43pm, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
} On Wed, Mar 15, 2000 at 01:48:33AM -0500, Laine Stump wrote:
} > Along similar lines - some people say that they don't like having to
} > edit rc.conf to prevent a particular subsystem from running at startup,
} > and want to just remove the rc.d file to make it not run. Others say
} > that removing the file is a pain, because then it's more difficult to
} > turn it back on, and they would rather have rc.conf. Doesn't it work to
} 
} For this (and I'm really disapointed it's not done this way) I prefer to have
} 2 directories, says /etc/init.d (in which scripts lives) and /etc/rc.d (which
} contains symlinks to /etc/init.d scripts). The rc system would look in
} /etc/rc.d for things to start at boot up. You want to avoid starting this
} on boot, just remove /etc/rc.d/foo. But you still have the original script,
} so that you can easily add the symlink back, and you still can start the
} program by hand if needed.
} For example, on some machines I have NFS server set up (/etc/exports is here
} and valid) but NFS is not started at boot, I do it only when needed
} (which is exeptionnal) and stop it after. I would expect a rc.d based
} system would allow me to just type /etc/xxx/nfsd start, but here
} it's not possible: either the NFS server will start on boot or
} '/etc/rc.d/nfsd start' will do nothing (on a side note I'd also have put
} mound and nfsd in the same script). I think we're missing a functionality
} here.

     Make a 'forcestart' entry in the scripts, which would ignore the
rc.conf flag.

}-- End of excerpt from Manuel Bouyer