On Wed, 23 Mar 2016, Rocky Hotas wrote:
"The rc command appeared in 4.0BSD" (from
HISTORY).
I see that history added in the CSRG sccs revision 6.2 on 91/03/16. I
don't know why it says that as it was in 3BSD too. The /etc/rc concept
wasn't new in 4BSD.
The script was rewritten though for 4BSD to be used for "autoboot". Init
was extended to run /etc/rc to do a fsck if not booting single user
mode. (And if the fsck failed it could go into single user mode.)
The history should be fixed to be more clear about.
(For fun, read the usr/man/man0/changes from 4.0BSD about autoboot and
reboot.)