Re: Unbound does not start as a system daemon

On Tue, Apr 21, 2026 at 08:24:02PM +0200, sus town wrote:
> >Synopsis:      Unbound does not start as a system daemon
> >Category:      system
> >Environment:
>         System      : OpenBSD 7.8
>         Details     : OpenBSD 7.8 (GENERIC.MP) #38: Sun Oct 12 18:23:44 MDT
> 2025
>                          [email protected]:
> /usr/src/sys/arch/arm64/compile/GENERIC.MP
> 
>         Architecture: OpenBSD.arm64
>         Machine     : arm64
> >Description:
>         Unbound does not start from rc. Running it as root from a shell '#
> unbound' works fine.
> >How-To-Repeat:
>         Start unbound using rcctl (or enable in /etc/rc.conf and reboot)

rcctl will only start daemons that are enabled.  You shouldn't edit
/etc/rc.conf.  Use rcctl enable or edit rc.conf.local, see EXAMPLES.

> rcctl debug:
> # rcctl -d start unbound
> doing _rc_parse_conf
> unbound_flags >YES<

You shouldn't be using YES as unbound_flags.  Else rcctl starts
unbound as:

  unbound YES

which isn't meaningful for unbound's command-line parser...

> doing rc_check
> unbound
> doing rc_pre
> unbound-checkconf: no errors in /var/unbound/etc/unbound.conf
> doing rc_start
> doing _rc_wait_for_start
> doing rc_check
> usage:  unbound [options]

... hence this error message.

>         start unbound daemon DNS resolver.
> -h      this help.
> -c file config file to read instead of /var/unbound/etc/unbound.conf
>         file format is described in unbound.conf(5).
> -d      do not fork into the background.
> -p      do not create a pidfile.
> -v      verbose (more times to increase verbosity).
> -V      show version number and build options.
> 
> Version 1.24.0
> BSD licensed, see LICENSE in source package for details.
> Report bugs to [email protected] or
> https://github.com/NLnetLabs/unbound/issues
> doing _rc_rm_runfile
> (failed)

-- 
jca