Confused about connection between an option in rc.conf and the associated action?

[Sancho2k.net Lists]

Ola Theander wrote:
> Dear subscribers
> 
> I'm slightly confused about enabling an option in rc.conf and the associated
> action? E.g. say that I enable gateway_enable="YES" or maybe
> dhcpd_enable="YES", how does FreeBSD associate this simple line to the
> associated action? I've had a theory that adding e.g. test_enable="YES" to
> rc.conf would trigger the execution of the file /etc/rc.d/test.sh at boot
> time but it seems like this isn't how it's done.

A lot of the time these are connected to scripts in /usr/local/etc/rc.d/ 
for ports you've installed, a lot of the time they are just handled 
natively by the system's supplied rc scripts. For example you can see 
the gateway_enable variable used in /etc/rc.d/routing.

Having said that, I can't see where sshd_enable is used anywhere on my 
system, although OpenSSH starts at boot...

DS