From d93cc122b342f9726775222aabbd9b9ef7ac55f7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: "R. Tyler Croy" <rtyler@brokenco.de>
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2020 11:47:06 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] Add a quick post about what I learned from FreeBSD manpages
 yesterday

documentation is so hard to read :)
---
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+---
+layout: post
+title: Running two practically identical daemons on FreeBSD
+tags:
+- freebsd
+---
+
+I stumbled into an annoying problem
+[yesterday](/2020/08/29/now-with-more-onions.html) when setting up Onion
+Services for the Gopher site(s) I operate on a FreeBSD machine: two different
+`rc.d` scripts were conflicting. 
+
+Since Gopher has no ability to consider "virtual hosts" the way an HTTP server
+might, I resolved to just run two different invocation of the same daemon
+with slightly different parameters. This blog post isn't about Gopher however,
+but about getting FreeBSD to run two very similar daemons.
+
+In my first attempt, somehow FreeBSD believed both scripts to be running the
+same exact process, for example:
+
+```bash
+% service gopheronion status
+gopheronion is running as pid 39023.
+% service gopher status
+gopher is running as pid 39023.
+```
+
+My `rc.d` scripts were basically a copy of the [Startup and shutdown of a
+simple
+daemon](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/rc-scripting/article.html#rcng-daemon)
+section of the handbook:
+
+```bash
+#!/bin/sh
+. /etc/rc.subr
+
+name="gopher
+command="usr/sbin/daemon"
+command_args="a bunch of args for the gopher server"
+
+load_rc_config $name
+run_rc_command "$1"
+```
+
+The two scripts were identical except for `command_args`, and somehow _both_
+could not run at the same time! I tried changing the names, changing the ordering, and even rewrote the scripts over again just to be safe.
+
+Nothing.
+
+Then I finally broke down and started reading some documentation.
+
+Deep in the `rc.subr(8)` manpage I noticed this note for the `run_rc_command` function:
+
+
+    procname      Process name to check for.  Defaults to the
+                  value of command.
+
+Aha! Both scripts had the same `command` (`/usr/sbin/daemon`), so the machinery
+inside of `run_rc_command` was considering them to basically be running the
+same process! Adding a different `procname` declaration to each file solved the problem, and voila! Both services were up and running!
+
+```bash
+# ...
+
+name="gopher
+procname="gopher"
+command="usr/sbin/daemon"
+command_args="a bunch of args for the gopher server"
+
+# ...
+```
+