RC.CONF(5)

NAME
rc.conf - Arch Linux main configuration file

SYNOPSIS

/etc/rc.conf

DESCRIPTION

The /etc/rc.conf file is the system configuration file for Arch-specific settings. The format is bash. It contains several commonly-edited settings such as time zone, keymap, kernel modules, daemons to load at start-up, etc. It is split up in a few sections to categorize configuration settings: localization, hardware, networking, and daemons.

DAEMONS

DAEMONS=

Daemons to start at boot-up (in this order)

    • prefix a daemon with a ! to disable it

    • prefix a daemon with a @ to start it up in the background

If you are sure nothing else touches your hardware clock (such as ntpd or by dual-booting), you might want to enable hwclock. Note that this will only make a difference if the hwclock program has been calibrated correctly.

If you use a network filesystem, you should enable netfs.

You might also want to enable syslog-ng, network and crond.

    DAEMONS=()

STORAGE

USEDMRAID=

Scan for FakeRAID (dmraid) volumes at start-up.

Default: no

    USEDMRAID="yes"

USELVM=

Scan for LVM volume groups at start-up. This is required if you use LVM.

Default: no

    USELVM="yes"

NETWORKING

HOSTNAME=

Hostname of machine. Unless nss-myhostname is used, this should also be set in /etc/hosts.

The contents of /etc/hostname (if not empty) takes precedence (see hostname(5)), and is recommended.

    HOSTNAME="arch1"

The following settings are used by the network daemon.

interface=

Name of device. Use ip addr or ls /sys/class/net/ to see all available interfaces.

Required for manual configuration. If using DHCP, it can be left unset, see dhcpcd(5) for details.

address=

IP address.

Required for manual configuration. If left empty, DHCP will be used.

netmask=

Subnet mask.

Defaults to 255.255.255.0. Ignored when using DHCP.

broadcast=

Broadcast address.

Optional for manual configuration, ignored for DHCP.

gateway=

Default route.

Required for manual configuration, ignored for DHCP.

Static IP example

    interface=eth0
    address=192.168.0.2
    netmask=255.255.255.0
    broadcast=192.168.0.255
    gateway=192.168.0.1

DHCP example

    interface=
    address=
    netmask=
    gateway=

NETWORK_PERSIST=

Setting this to "yes" will skip network shutdown. This is required if your root device is on NFS.

Default: no

    NETWORK_PERSIST="yes"

LOCALIZATION

TIMEZONE=

Specifies the time zone. The setting takes effect on boot by ensuring that /etc/localtime is a symlink to the correct zoneinfo file. Possible time zones are the relative path to a zoneinfo file starting from the directory /usr/share/zoneinfo. For example, a German time zone would be Europe/Berlin, which refers to the file /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Berlin.

It is recommended to leave this unset, and rather maintain the /etc/localtime symlink manually, or via third party tools. The reason for this is to avoid the symlink and the TIMEZONE variable to be out of sync, as they are only synchronized at boot. Also, most third-party applications that could maintain /etc/localtime do not know to also write to /etc/rc.conf.

    TIMEZONE="Europe/Berlin"

HARDWARECLOCK=

How to interpret/update the hardware clock.

Options:

    • empty: fall back to the value in /etc/adjtime, which defaults to UTC.

    • "UTC": allows the operating systems to abstract away local time and ease DST.

    • "localtime": apply time zone (and DST) in hardwareclock: strongly discouraged. Choose this if you dual-boot with an OS which cannot handle UTC BIOS times correctly, like Windows (note that recent Windows versions can use UTC, which is preferable).

It is strongly recommended to leave this unset, and rather maintain /etc/adjtime (see hwclock(8)). The reason for this is that calls to hwclock outside of initscripts are not aware of the HARDWARECLOCK variable and will always use /etc/adjtime. These two configuration sources being out-of-sync is a common source of timezone problems.

    HARDWARECLOCK="UTC"

KEYMAP=

Defines the keymap to load with the loadkeys program on boot. Possible keymaps are found in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps. Please note that this setting is only valid for your TTYs, not any graphical window managers or X.

KEYMAP in /etc/vconsole.conf takes precedence (see vconsole.conf(5)), and is recommended.

    KEYMAP="no-latin1"

CONSOLEFONT=

Defines the console font to load with the setfont program on boot. Possible fonts are found in /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts (only needed for non-US).

FONT in /etc/vconsole.conf takes precedence (see vconsole.conf(5)), and is recommended.

    CONSOLEFONT="LatArCyrHeb-16"

CONSOLEMAP=

Defines the console map to load with the setfont program on boot. Possible maps are found in /usr/share/kbd/consoletrans. Set this to a map suitable for the appropriate locale (8859-1 for Latin1, for example) if you’re using an UTF-8 locale and use programs that generate 8-bit output. If you’re using X11 for everyday work, don’t bother, as it only affects the output of Linux console applications.

FONT_MAP in /etc/vconsole.conf takes precedence (see vconsole.conf(5)), and is recommended.

    CONSOLEMAP="8859-1"

LOCALE=

This sets your system language, which will be used by all i18n-friendly applications and utilities. See locale -a (or locale.gen) for available options.

LANG in /etc/locale.conf takes precedence (see locale.conf(5)), and is recommended. User-specific locale settings which override both /etc/locale.conf and /etc/rc.conf are set in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/locale.conf using the same syntax as /etc/locale.conf.

If unset, it falls back to the C locale.

    LOCALE="en_US.UTF-8"

USECOLOR=

Use ANSI color sequences in start-up messages, unless set to no.

    USECOLOR="yes"

HARDWARE

MODULES=

Modules to load at boot-up. To blacklist modules, see modprobe.d(5).

Configuration files in /etc/modules-load.d/ are recommended instead (see modules-load.d(5)).

    MODULES=('kvm')

SEE ALSO

hostname(5), vconsole.conf(5), locale.conf(5), hwclock(8), modules-load.d(5), modprobe.d(5), ip(8), dhcpcd(8)

AUTHORS

Written by Dieter Plaetinck, Tom Gundersen, and others.