FreeBSD Tools: thefish – /etc/rc.conf GUI/TUI editor

The Fish provides a graphical tool (GTK+, QT, ncurses frontends) used to manage system variables stored in /etc/defaults/rc.conf and /etc/rc.conf.

In this example we'll use the ncurses version of The Fish.

To configure thefish, enter the following command:

make config -C /usr/ports/sysutils/thefish

You will see something like this:

thefish - default config

We'll enable CONSOLE support and we'll disable GTK+ and QT because we don't use X11 on our FreeBSD server:

thefish - ncurses

Next, install thefish with the following command:

make install clean -C /usr/ports/sysutils/thefish

Once you have thefish installed, you have an easy-to-use ncurses interface for changing /etc/rc.conf parameters with brief descriptions regarding each parameter. You also have the ability to add other parameters if you have installed an application that comes with its own rc.conf knobs.

thefish

thefish - rc.conf console editor