initscripts/rc.conf

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Reason: There's no more initscripts package (either in the repos or AUR), and this information isn't accurate for forks that have made various changes. (Discuss)
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Warning: Arch only supports systemd. Arch's old initscripts package is obsolete and is no longer supported. All Arch users need to move to systemd.

/etc/rc.conf is the configuration file for initscripts. It configures what daemons to start at boot, the basic network daemon, and certain aspects of hardware discovery.

Contents

Overview

This is what a typical rc.conf file looks like on an up-to-date Arch install. (current version): 

/etc/rc.conf
#
# /etc/rc.conf - configuration file for initscripts
#
# Most of rc.conf has been replaced by various other configuration
# files. See archlinux(7) for details.
#
# For more details on rc.conf see rc.conf(5).
#

DAEMONS=()

# A reasonable DAEMONS array when using sysvinit is:
# DAEMONS=(syslog-ng network crond)
#
# When using systemd, it is recommended to only enable daemons that
# do not have native systemd service files.

# Storage
#
# USEDMRAID="no"
# USELVM="no"

# Network
#
# interface=
# address=
# netmask=
# gateway=

New configuration file

In the past, this file also used to contain configurations for other parts of the system. If you are using initscripts as your init system, /etc/rc.conf configures which daemons to start during boot-up and some networking and storage information.

Note: Using the legacy configuration options in /etc/rc.conf for system configuring still works (for now) with the default init system, but the new configuration files take precedence and using them is recommended. The new files will also work for configuring systemd. See Systemd#Native_configuration
Configuration Configuration file(s) or tool Legacy rc.conf section
Hostname /etc/hostname NETWORKING
Console fonts and keymap /etc/vconsole.conf LOCALIZATION
Locale /etc/locale.conf

/etc/locale.gen

LOCALIZATION
Timezone /etc/localtime LOCALIZATION
Hardware clock /etc/adjtime LOCALIZATION
Kernel modules /etc/modules-load.d/ HARDWARE
Daemons systemctl tool DAEMONS
Static network /etc/conf.d/network NETWORKING

Configuration files can simply be created if they do not exist already and you wish to change the defaults.

Daemons

DAEMONS
Warning: Systemd can handle daemons in Arch. Arch users need to migrate to systemd and use systemd to start daemons instead. See systemd for more information.
A space-separated list of scripts located in /etc/rc.d/ which are started during the boot process. Usually you do not need to change the defaults to get a running system, but you are going to edit this array whenever you install system services like sshd, and want to start these automatically during boot-up. This is basically Arch's way of handling what others handle with various symlinks to an init.d directory. For more info see: Writing rc.d scripts
  1. If a script name is prefixed with a bang (!), it is not executed.
  2. If a script is prefixed with an "at" symbol (@), then it will be executed in the background, i.e. the startup sequence will not wait for successful completion before continuing.
Example: 
DAEMONS=(@syslog-ng !network net-profiles crond sshd)
Note: The order in which the daemons are listed is important as they are loaded in that order.

Hardware

USEDMRAID
Scan for FakeRAID (dmraid) Volumes at startup (runs dmraid -i -ay).
USELVM
Scan for LVM volume groups at start-up, which is required if you use LVM. Setting to YES runs vgchange --sysinit -a y (handled by activate_vgs() function) during sysinit.
Note: USEBTRFS is no longer needed, as it is taken care of by udev.

Interface configuration

rc.conf only supports the configuration of a single interface. For the configuration of multiple interfaces or other advanced network configurations like bridging, use netcfg.

These settings should go into /etc/conf.d/network. See also Using a static IP address

interface
name of device (required)
address
IP address (leave blank for DHCP)
netmask
subnet mask (ignored for DHCP) (optional, defaults to 255.255.255.0)
broadcast
broadcast address (ignored for DHCP) (optional)
gateway
default route (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=eth0
address=
netmask=
gateway=
Note: Make sure to add network to DAEMONS 
DAEMONS=(... network sshd)
or, if using netcfg, add net-profiles 
DAEMONS=(... !network net-profiles sshd)

Modules

MODULES
Warning: Modules to be autoloaded at boot are now specified in /etc/modules-load.d/, and modules to be blacklisted are now specified in /etc/modprobe.d/.

Modules to load at boot-up in addition to auto-loaded ones, to do this see Kernel modules#Loading, and to blacklist modules, see Kernel modules#Blacklisting.

Note: MOD_AUTOLOAD is deprecated as of initscripts 2011.06.1-1, you can use udev rules to achieve the same effect.
Tip: Some modules may not be loaded in the order they are listed, as they might also be loaded on-demand by udev. For consistent network interface names between boots, create the appropriate udev rules.

Localization

HARDWARECLOCK
Warning: This setting is now configured in /etc/adjtime.
Specifies whether the hardware clock, which is synchronized from on bootup and to on shutdown, stores UTC time, or the localtime. If this value is not set, then the value stored by hwclock in /var/lib/hwclock/adjtime is used instead. See Time for more information.
  1. UTC makes sense because it greatly simplifies changing timezones and daylight savings time. Linux will change to-and-from DST, regardless of whether Linux was running at the time DST is entered or left.
  2. localtime is necessary if you dual boot with an operating system that only stores localtime, such as Windows. Linux will not adjust the time, operating under the assumption that your system may be a dual-boot system at that time and that the other OS takes care of the DST switch. If that was not the case, the DST change needs to be made manually.
  3. empty: fall back to the value in /etc/adjtime, which defaults to UTC. This is recommended as other users of hwclock might change the adjtime file and hence cause rc.conf and adjtime to be out of sync
  4. any other value will result in the hardware clock being left untouched (useful for virtualization)
TIMEZONE
Warning: This setting is now configured by the /etc/localtime symlink.
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
Warning: This setting is now configured in /etc/vconsole.conf.
The keyboard layout you want to use. If you live in the US, you probably use qwerty, which is referred using us (default). The available keymaps are in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps.
Note: Please note that this setting is only valid for your TTYs, not any graphical window managers or X!
CONSOLEFONT
Warning: This setting is now configured in /etc/vconsole.conf.
Defines the console font to load with the setfont program on boot-up (ter-v14b for example). Possible fonts are found in /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts (only needed for non-US). FONT in /etc/vconsole.conf takes precedence. For more info see: Console fonts
CONSOLEMAP
Warning: This setting is now configured in /etc/vconsole.conf.
Defines the console map to load with the setfont program on boot-up (8859-1_to_uni for example). Possible 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. FONT_MAP in /etc/vconsole.conf takes precedence.
Note: If using X11 for everyday work, note that this only affects the output of console applications.
LOCALE
Warning: This setting is now configured in /etc/locale.gen. Run locale-gen to update changes. The system-wide locale can be set in /etc/locale.conf.
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. The LANG variable in /etc/locale.conf takes precedence if it is set, and users of login shells that cannot source /etc/rc.conf, should set that value instead.
DAEMON_LOCALE
Warning: This setting is obsolete.
If set to yes, use $LOCALE as the locale during daemon startup and during the boot process. If set to no, the C locale is used. Default value is yes.
USECOLOR
Warning: This setting is obsolete.
Enable (or disable) colorized status messages during boot-up.

Networking

The HOSTNAME variable is deprecated, and the hostname is now set in /etc/hostname (see man 5 hostname).

Network Persist

The NETWORK_PERSIST variable tells the system whether or not to skip network shutdown. This is required if your root device is on NFS. The default setting is "no". 

# default
NETWORK_PERSIST="no"

# NFS-based root device
# NETWORK_PERSIST="yes"

GUI Frontends

This is a list of /etc/rc.conf GUI front-ends, designed to provide a graphical interface to the /etc/rc.conf file. The list includes GTK2-based software and Qt based software.

Warning: None of these tools are officially supported by the Arch developers. Moreover, systemd is now the default init daemon, so /etc/rc.conf is obsolete.

ArchLinux Daemon Manager GUI

ArchLinux Daemon Manager allows you to easily change settings in /etc/rc.conf using GTK application aldm-gui or command-line application aldm.

rcconf-settings

rcconf-settings is a tool designed for the Chakra GNU/Linux distribution but should also work on Arch Linux.

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