System: Bootdelay
(last edit: 2001-06-19)
                   
Introduction
When you boot your FreeBSD machine you'll see something like this:
"Hit [enter] to boot immediatly....." during the bootprocess. This message
is a good thing, it gives you the oppertunity to boot another kernel but it can
be a bit anyoing if you have to boot your machine daily (like my laptop). It
would be nice to change the delay time from 10 seconds to something like 3.

Where, how, what
The program 'loader' is respocible for the last part of the bootstrapping stage,
one of the things it does is displaying the above message and loading the
selected kernel. The 'loader' has a configuration file located in the '/boot'
dir. It works kinda like the '/etc/rc.conf' file, it also has a default file
located in the '/boot/default/loader.conf' (take a look at it, there are some
interesting things in there). As you browse through this file you'll find an
option 'autoboot_delay="10"' which is commented out. Like the 'rc.conf' file
you don't edit it here but in '/boot/loader.conf'. If this file doesn't exist:
create it. Place the following in this file:

        autoboot_delay="[NR OF SECOND]"  e.g. autoboot_delay="3"

Reboot youre machine and you'll see that the delay time has changed. If you
change the time to zero seconds, no question will be asked and the '/kernel'
file will be used as kernel and loaded.