The rcctl utility can enable or disable a base system service or a base system or package daemon in rc.conf.local or display its configuration and status. For a daemon, it can also change the command line arguments, the user to run as, the rc.d action timeout or call its rc.d daemon control script.

The /etc/rc.d directory contains shell scripts to start, stop, and reconfigure daemon programs (“services”).

Services installed from packages may be started at boot time in the order specified by the pkg_scripts variable from rc.conf the order will be reversed during shutdown. Services comprising OpenBSD base are started by rc.

The options are as follows:

-d……..Setting this option will print the function names as they are called and prevent the rc.subr framework from redirecting stdout and stderr to /dev/null. This is used to allow debugging of failed actions.

-f………This option only affects the start action. It will forcibly start the daemon whatever value daemon_flags is set to. If daemon_flags is set to “NO”, execution will continue with the script's own defaults unless other flags are specified.

Each such script responds to the following actions:

start………..-Start the service, if not already running.
stop………..-Stop the service.
reload…….-Tell the daemon to reload its configuration.
restart…….-Perform a stop, then a start.
check………-Return 0 if the daemon is running or 1 if it is not.

• This topic shows how to run a simple process as priviledged system daemon which enable it be started/stopped/enabled by rcctl daemon control system
• Here we'll use hopm process to explain how to launch it into system daemon.
• For this to work , we'll first install hopm as user hopm, group hopm as usual refer more of it here https://ircnow.org/kb/doku.php?id=openbsd:irc:hopm
• Then we'll create a rc.d script in /etc/rc.d dir by name of “hopm”
• Then We'll lauch the process by calling “rcctl start hopm” with root priviledge

Now give following commands -

doas  cd /etc/rc.d
doas  nano hopm

In nano editor add the following code daemon should be set equal to “/path/to/daemon”

#!/bin/ksh
daemon="/home/hopm/hopm/bin/hopm"
. /etc/rc.d/rc.subr
rc_cmd $1

save the file and run the following command.

doas rcctl start hopm
doas rcctl enable hopm

First command will start the processs(hopm) with root priviledge system daemon and second command will enable it to be restarted automatically at booting up.

• Syntax errors when hopm is running in foreground. This is either the result of missing brackets where needed in config file, or that the file has DOS encodings. See https://github.com/ircd-hybrid/hopm/issues/22#issuecomment-301276082 here. The missing brackets where it was needed may come from the previous section, compared to the line/s where it is indicated by hopm when executed.