you can edit your machine's rc bootup files at /private/etc/ folder.
That is something you don't want to be doing. It's just a silly
suggestion first off, as almost anything you'd add to rc should
have been placed elsewhere. And rc is "going away" any ways.
ok dan, put your thinking cap on...
where are the other text files i can edit to tell it what to do at
startup?
On 10.3 you would add DNSSERVER=-YES- to /etc/hostconfig.
On 10.4 you would enable the named launchd job.