Config files

Here a brief overview of the most important configuration files. Gentoo has a protection mechanism to not automatically overwrite the config files (in the protected directories, usually /etc) during updates. To know what got changed, can be found out using the /var/lib/portage/config file that holds the checksums of the original files. There are also GUI tools not dedicated to a single Linux distribution to maintain and configure Linux:

emerge webmin

Files that will be customized

It might be worth to have a backup (See http://www.linurs.org/genservice.html).

/boot/grub/grub.conf

Configuration of boot loader grub

/etc/conf.d/clock

Link to timezone

/etc/conf.d/domainname

Contains domain name

/etc/conf.d/hostname

Contains name of this computer

/etc/conf.d/net

Contains default gateway and network settings

/etc/fstab

Contains devices to be mounted FD, CD ROM, HD, or default settings for mounting

/etc/group

Defines group membership of users

/etc/hosts

Contains other hosts and their IP addresses

/etc/make.conf

Is the most important of them all contains CPU info usefags and more

/etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6

Modules (e.g. HW) that have to be loaded at start up

/etc/passwd

Defines user accounts

/etc/rc.conf

Contains global configuration settings e.g. unicode

/etc/X11/xorg.conf

Configuration of X server

Files usually not to be customized

They however influence system behavior significantly:

/etc/make.profile/make.defaults

USE variables e.g. kde qt

/etc/profile

Contains path to programs and default editors, points to /etc/profile.env witch is produced automatically by env-update contains variables

/etc/resolv.conf

Contains domain name and nameserver IP


Linurs startpage