Service Manager

Service Manager

Service Manager, seen in Figure 7.2a, provides an easy-to-use graphical utility for managing PC-BSD services. The listed services can be enabled/disabled at system startup and their current status can be toggled to stopped or running. To access this utility, go to PC-BSD Control Panel ➜ Service Manager. You will be prompted to input the administrative password.

Figure 7.2a: Managing Services Using Service Manager

By default, services will be listed alphabetically. You can reorder the services by clicking on the Service Name, Running, or Enabled header.

Service Manager is a graphical front-end to the rc scripts located in /etc/rc.d. PC-BSD 9.1 will include an Info button where you can get a short description of the highlighted service.

If you don't know what a service does, you shouldn't change its settings in Service Manager. If you'd like to learn more about a service, try seeing if there is a man page for it. For example, type man apm or man bootparamd. If a man page does not exist, try seeing what man pages are associated with that keyword. For example:

apropos accounting
ac(8)                    - connect time accounting
acct(2)                  - enable or disable process accounting
acct(5)                  - execution accounting file
accton(8)                - enable/disable system accounting
ipfw(4)                  - IP packet filter and traffic accounting
pac(8)                   - printer/plotter accounting information
pam_lastlog(8)           - login accounting PAM module
sa(8)                    - print system accounting statistics