my.cnf file not used by mysqld_safe in FreeBSD

Hi,
I have a server with FreeBSD 4.10 and mySQL 5.0 and
I'm trying to use the my-small.cnf file as my my.cnf file.
I have copied and renamed it to /usr/local/mysql/my.cnf which
is where my BASEDIR referes to.

I have added this to the [mysqld] and [mysqld_safe] sections
open_files_limit = 512

I start mysqld at startup from the rc.local file:
/bin/sh -c 'cd /usr/local/mysql; ./bin/mysqld_safe
--defaults-file=/usr/local/mysql/my.cnf --user=mysql
--basedir=/usr/local/mysql/ --datadir=/usr/local/mysql/data/ &'
I also tried only:
/bin/sh -c 'cd /usr/local/mysql; ./bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &'

But if I look into mysql the open_files_limit stay a the default value,
so
it seems that the my.cnf file is not readed.

I tried moving the my.cnf file to these directories
/usr/local/mysql/data/
/usr/local/etc/
/etc/
without any results

I also tried to change the owner and group of my.cnf to mysql

If I have 2 copies of my.cnf in the /usr/local/mysql/ and
/usr/local/mysql/data/ directories .. I get a message from
mysqld at startup saying that it found 2 copies of my.cnf
and will ignore the one in the /data/ directory. So it seems
that mysqld is looking for the file and is looking at the right
place. Very strange!

If I use my_print_defaults mysql mysql_safe I get the correct
values.

Why mysqld is not using the open_files_limit value? So other
configuration values do not match the values in my.cnf too.

I spent many hours on this, and really don't know what else
to try ... any help will be greatly appreciate

Thanks in advance.

Ok, it seems the file is read but not every options are taken into
account (like the open_files_limit). I just tried to put my.cnf in
the /etc/ directory and add this line to the file:
skip-innodb

When I rebooted mysql took 10Meg less RAM. It doesn't work if I
put the file in the /usr/local/etc/ directory. I didn't test it in
/usr/local/mysql and /usr/local/mysql/data/.

I still don't understant why some options do not change anything,
many of them like:
sort_buffer_size
net_buffer_length
table_cache
key_buffer_size
thread_stack
open_files_limit

By the way anyone know if innoDB is really usefull for a small
mySQL database? I would really like to free 10 megs from memory

Thanks