In some Linux® distributions, one could look at /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward to determine if IP forwarding is enabled. In FreeBSD, sysctl(8) is instead used to view this and other system settings.

For example, use the following to determine if IP forwarding is enabled on a FreeBSD system:

% sysctl net.inet.ip.forwarding
net.inet.ip.forwarding: 0

Use -a to list all the system settings:

% sysctl -a | more

If an application requires procfs, add the following entry to /etc/fstab:

proc                /proc           procfs  rw,noauto       0       0

Including noauto will prevent /proc from being automatically mounted at boot.

To mount the file system without rebooting:

# mount /proc