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.

LOCALIZATION

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.

If leave empty, LANG in /etc/locale.conf will be used. If unset in both, it falls back to the C locale.

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.

Note: If empty, /etc/localtime is not changed. This is useful if /etc/localtime is maintained manually or by a third-party tool, or if there is no reason to change it from what was set during install.

HARDWARECLOCK=

How to interpret/update the hardware clock. (used by hwclock)

Options:

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

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

    • "localtime": apply time zone (and DST) in hardwareclock. 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).

    • any other value will result in the hardware clock being left untouched (useful for virtualization)

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).

If both CONSOLEFONT and KEYMAP leave empty, FONT in /etc/vconsole.conf will be used.

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.

If both CONSOLEFONT and KEYMAP leave empty, FONT_MAP in /etc/vconsole.conf will be used.

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.

If both CONSOLEFONT and KEYMAP leave empty, KEYMAP in /etc/vconsole.conf will be used.

USECOLOR=

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

Default: yes

HARDWARE

MODULES=

Modules to load at boot-up.

Prefix with a ! to blacklist. Alternatively you can add following line in a file in /etc/modprobe.d:

    blacklist <module>

See man modprobe.d(5) for details.

If leave empty, contents of modules-load.d will be used.

USEDMRAID=

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

Default: no

USELVM=

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

Default: no

NETWORKING

HOSTNAME=

Hostname of machine. Should also be put in /etc/hosts, unless nss-myhostname is used.

If leave empty, the contents of /etc/hostname (if exists) will be used.

The following settings help you setting up a wired network.

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.

The following options might be needed for advanced use-cases.

NETWORK_PERSIST=

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

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.

Default: (syslog-ng network crond)

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.