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

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 enable or disable it. If you'd like to learn more about a service, try searching for the binary name in the associated rc script. For example, to learn more about accounting:

grep bin /etc/rc.d/accounting
#!/bin/sh
accounting_command="/usr/sbin/accton"
whatis accton
accton(8)                - enable/disable system accounting

You could then read man accton to learn more about system accounting.