[arch-general] rc.conf man page

Dave Reisner d at falconindy.com
Mon Aug 23 14:59:11 EDT 2010


I threw together a man page for rc.conf based on info gleaned from the
Wiki, rc.conf itself, and my own experiences. I offer it up for for
adoption into the initscripts package along with comments, critcisms,
and rotten tomatoes. The format is asciidoc, which is the same format
used by pacman.

If desirable, I'm willing to compile other pages for system config files
in a similar manner.

d
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vim:set ts=4 sw=4 syntax=asciidoc noet:
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rc.conf(5)
==========

Name
----
rc.conf - core system configuration file

Synopsis
--------
rc.conf

Description
-----------
This manual page is meant to describe the fields defined in /etc/rc.conf.

Localization
------------

*LOCALE*::
	This sets your system language, which will be used by all i18n-friendly
	applications and utilities. You can get a list of the available locales by
	running locale -a from the command line. This setting's default is fine for
	US English users.

*HARDWARECLOCK*::
	Specifies whether the hardware clock, which is synchronized from on bootup
	and to on shutdown, stores UTC time, or the localtime. UTC makes sense
	because it greatly simplifies changing timezones and daylight savings time.
	localtime is necessary if you dual boot with an operating system that only
	stores localtime to the hardware clock, such as Windows.

*TIMEZONE*::
	Specifies your time zone. Possible time zones are the relative path to a
	zoneinfo file starting from the directory /usr/share/zoneinfo. For example,
	a German timezone would be Europe/Berlin, which refers to the file
	/usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Berlin.

*KEYMAP*::
	The layout describing your keyboard. This defaults to qwerty. Available
	keymaps are in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps. Note that this setting has no effect
	in X.

*CONSOLEFONT*::
	Defines the console font to load with the setfont program on boot-up (e.g.
	ter-v14b). Available fonts are in /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts.

*CONSOLEMAP*::
	Defines the console map to load with the setfont program on boot-up
	(8859-1_to_uni for example). Available maps are found in
	/usr/share/kbd/consoletrans. You will want to set this to a map suitable
	for your locale (8859-1 for Latin1, for example) if you use an utf8 locale
	above and use programs that generate 8-bit output. Note that this setting 
	has no effect in X.

*USECOLOR*::
	Set to 'yes' or 'no'. Enable (or disable) colorized status messages during
	bootup and when starting/stopping daemons.

Hardware
--------

*MOD_AUTOLOAD*::
	Set to 'yes' or 'no'. If set to 'yes', your hardware will be scanned at boot
	time by udev and the appropriate kernel modules will be loaded.

*MODULES (array)*::
	Explicit list of modules to be loaded or blacklisted during bootup. This
	can be defined in addition to setting MOD_AUTOLOAD as 'yes' and *must* be
	defined if MOD_AUTOLOAD is set to 'no'. To blacklist a module, prefix it
	with a '!' symbol.

*USELVM*::
	Set to 'yes' or 'no'. If you use LVM, set this to 'yes'.

Networking
----------

*HOSTNAME*::
	Sets of the hostname of the machine.

*INTERFACES (array)*::
	A list of network interfaces, specified by their kernel name (e.g. eth0).
	For each interface in this list, the 'network' service expects a variable
	of the same name to exist providing either a parameter string for
	initialization, or 'dhcp'. Interfaces can be prevented from starting by
	prefixing with a '!'.

	Example:
		eth0="eth0 192.168.0.10 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255
		eth1="dhcp"
		INTERFACES=(eth0 !eth1)

	

*ROUTES (array)*::
	A list of routes to be created. For each item in this list, the 'network'
	service expects to find a variable of the same name to exist providing a
	string of parameters to be passed to the 'route' command in order to create
	the route. Routes can prevented from being created by prefixing with a '!' symbol.
	
	Example:
		gateway="default gw 192.168.0.1"
		ROUTES=(gateway)

Daemons
-------

*DAEMONS (array)*::
	A list of daemons to be started by 'rc.multi'. Daemons are started *in the
	order listed* and shutdown in reverse order. Each entry must have a
	corresponding script existing in '/etc/rc.d'. To start a daemon in the
	background, prefix it with a '@' symbol. To prevent a daemon from being
	started, prefix it with a '!' symbol.



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