OpenBSD provides rc.subr(8), a framework for writing rc(8) scripts.

Creating the daemon

Create the file /etc/rc.d/fossil with contents like the following.

#!/bin/ksh
daemon="/usr/local/bin/fossil" # fossil executable
daemon_user="_fossil" # user to run fossil as
daemon_flags="server /home/_fossil/example --repolist --port 8888" # fossil command

. /etc/rc.d/rc.subr
# pexp="$daemon server .*" # See below.
rc_reload=NO # Unsupported by Fossil; 'rcctl reload fossil' kills the process.
rc_bg=YES # Run in the background, since fossil serve does not daemonize itself
rc_cmd $1

pexp

You may need to uncomment the "pexp=". rc.subr typically finds the daemon process based by matching the process name and argument list. Without the "pexp=" line, rc.subr would look for this exact command:

/usr/local/bin/fossil server /home/_fossil/example --repolist --port 8888

Depending on the arguments and their order, fossil may rewrite the arguments for display in the process listing (ps(1)), so rc.subr may fail to find the process through the default match. The example above does not get rewritten, but the same commands in a different order can be rewritten. For example, when I switch the order of the arguments in "daemon_flags",

/usr/local/bin/fossil server --repolist --port 8888 /home/_fossil/example

the process command is changed to this.

/usr/local/bin/fossil server /home/_fossil/example /home/_fossil/example 8888 /home/_fossil/example

The commented "pexp=" line instructs rc.subr to choose the process whose command and arguments text starts with this:

/usr/local/bin/fossil server 

Enabling the daemon

Once you have created /etc/rc.d/fossil, run these commands.

rcctl enable fossil # add fossil to pkg_scripts in /etc/rc.conf.local
rcctl start fossil # start the daemon now

The daemon should now be running and set to start at boot.

Multiple daemons

You may want to serve multiple fossil instances with different options. For example,

• If different users own different repositories, you may want different users to serve different repositories.
• You may want to serve different repositories on different ports so you can control them differently with, for example, HTTP reverse proxies or pf(4).

To run multiple fossil daemons, create multiple files in /etc/rc.d, and enable each of them. Here are two approaches for creating the files in /etc/rc.d: Symbolic links and copies.

Symbolic links

Suppose you want to run one fossil daemon as user "user1" on port 8881 and another as user "user2" on port 8882. Create the files with ln(1), and configure them to run different fossil commands.

cd /etc/rc.d
ln -s fossil fossil1
ln -s fossil fossil2
rcctl enable fossil1 fossil2
rcctl set fossil1 user user1
rcctl set fossil2 user user2
rcctl set fossil1 flags 'server /home/user1/repo1.fossil --port 8881'
rcctl set fossil2 flags 'server /home/user2/repo2.fossil --port 8882'
rcctl start fossil1 fossil2

Copies

You may want to run fossil daemons that are too different to configure just with rcctl(8). In particular, you can't change the "pexp" with rcctl.

If you want to run fossil commands that are more different, you may prefer to create separate files in /etc/rc.d. Replace "ln -s" above with "cp" to accomplish this.

cp /etc/rc.d/fossil /etc/rc.d/fossil-user1
cp /etc/rc.d/fossil /etc/rc.d/fossil-user2

You can still use commands like "rcctl set fossil-user1 flags", but you can also edit the "/etc/rc.d/fossil-user1" file.