On Tue, Apr 10, 2001 at 07:26:41PM +0100, Matthew Theobalds wrote:
> On Tuesday, April 10, 2001, at 12:43  am, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
> 
> > /etc/rc.conf changes demand a reboot, since it determines startup 
> > settings.
> 
> This is annoying as I wish to change the domain associated with the 
> machine for email purposes, but was quite enjoying my uptime.
> 
> Is there any other way around this?
> 


It is simple to get around this. Do the following:

1. Realize the /etc/rc.conf contains parameters for a few programs
started by scripts when your machine boots.

2. Almost all of those parameters can be changed. The main reason you
would restart after changing /etc/rc.conf is to test the boot-up
process. Any of the processes that contain networking info can be
restarted manually. You might not want to do it remotely in case
you're networking doesn't start up correctly.

3. Traditionally, for programs with a 'conf' file, you would simply
restart them with a "kill -HUP" to force the rereading of the 'conf'
file.

Now the killer hard part. Read /etc/rc, then realize it just reads
your parameter file and calls files in /etc/rc.d, followed by
/etc/rc.local - Sadly answering your question has made me realize,
even with NetBSDs restraint at the very least I'm running some
processes, for want of a better term, by accident. 

Which means you're forcing me to do the same things I just told you to do.

-- 
Josh Kuperman
josh@ssimr.com
http://www.ssimr.com

PS. If you just want to run sendmail, download the latest from
sendmail.org and read the instructions.