using /etc/rc rc.conf and sendmail

[George Georgalis]

After seeing sendmail start on boot with 

# grep mta /etc/rc.conf
mta_start_script="/usr/bin/true"

(also tried /dev/null)

I looked a little deeper. For whatever reason I presumed that was an
authoritative rc.conf file.  But I see in /etc/rc.sendmail

if [ -r /etc/defaults/rc.conf ]; then
        . /etc/defaults/rc.conf
        source_rc_confs
elif [ -r /etc/rc.conf ]; then
        . /etc/rc.conf
fi

. ..shouldn't that be

if [ -r /etc/defaults/rc.conf ]; then
        . /etc/defaults/rc.conf
        source_rc_confs
fi
if [ -r /etc/rc.conf ]; then
        . /etc/rc.conf
fi


or just

if [ -r /etc/defaults/rc.conf ]; then
        . /etc/defaults/rc.conf
        source_rc_confs
fi


with source_rc_confs fixed?

Why wouldn't /etc/rc.conf be sourced last per default? do I have
a misunderstanding of the /etc/rc.conf purpose? Is there an rc
blueprint? Following /etc/rc et al, it looks to me like the process
of sourcing conf files is a bit over engineered. Is there a specified
reason of the configuration file definition and sourcing process?

Should I be modifying /etc/defaults/rc.conf and altogether do away with
/etc/rc.conf?

// George


-- 
George Georgalis, systems architect, administrator Linux BSD IXOYE
http://galis.org/george/ cell:646-331-2027 mailto:george at xxxxxxxxx