Copyright 2011 Lennart Poettering
systemd is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
- under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
- the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
+ under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
+ the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
systemd is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
- General Public License for more details.
+ Lesser General Public License for more details.
- You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
+ You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
along with systemd; If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
-->
<refentry id="sysctl.d">
<refsect1>
<title>Description</title>
- <para><command>systemd</command> uses configuration files
- from the above directories to configure
- <citerefentry><refentrytitle>sysctl</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>
- kernel parameters to load during boot.</para>
+ <para>At boot,
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-sysctl.service</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>
+ reads configuration files from the above directories
+ to configure
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>sysctl</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>
+ kernel parameters.</para>
</refsect1>
<refsect1>
- <title>Configuration Format</title>
-
- <para>The configuration files should simply contain a
- list of variable assignments, separated by
- newlines. Empty lines and lines whose first
- non-whitespace character is # or ; are ignored.</para>
-
- <para>Note that both / and . are accepted as
- separators in sysctl variable names.</para>
-
- <para>Each configuration file is named in the style of
- <filename><program>.conf</filename>.
- Files in <filename>/etc/</filename> overwrite
- files with the same name in <filename>/usr/lib/</filename>.
- Files in <filename>/run</filename> overwrite files with
- the same name in <filename>/etc/</filename> and
- <filename>/usr/lib/</filename>. Packages should install their
- configuration files in <filename>/usr/lib/</filename>, files
- in <filename>/etc/</filename> are reserved for the local
- administration, which possibly decides to overwrite the
- configurations installed from packages. All files are sorted
- by filename in alphabetical order, regardless in which of the
- directories they reside, to ensure that a specific
- configuration file takes precedence over another file with
- an alphabetically later name.</para>
+ <title>Configuration Format</title>
+
+ <para>The configuration files contain a list of
+ variable assignments, separated by newlines. Empty
+ lines and lines whose first non-whitespace character
+ is # or ; are ignored.</para>
+
+ <para>Note that both / and . are accepted as label
+ separators within sysctl variable
+ names. <literal>kernel.domainname=foo</literal> and
+ <literal>kernel/domainname=foo</literal> hence are
+ entirely equivalent.</para>
+
+ <para>Each configuration file shall be named in the
+ style of <filename><program>.conf</filename>.
+ Files in <filename>/etc/</filename> override files
+ with the same name in <filename>/usr/lib/</filename>
+ and <filename>/run/</filename>. Files in
+ <filename>/run/</filename> override files with the same
+ name in <filename>/usr/lib/</filename>. Packages
+ should install their configuration files in
+ <filename>/usr/lib/</filename>. Files in
+ <filename>/etc/</filename> are reserved for the local
+ administrator, who may use this logic to override the
+ configuration files installed by vendor packages. All
+ configuration files are sorted by their filename in
+ alphabetical order, regardless in which of the
+ directories they reside, to guarantee that a specific
+ configuration file takes precedence over another file
+ with an alphabetically earlier name, if both files
+ contain the same variable setting.</para>
+
+ <para>If the administrator wants to disable a
+ configuration file supplied by the vendor the
+ recommended way is to place a symlink to
+ <filename>/dev/null</filename> in
+ <filename>/etc/sysctl.d/</filename> bearing the
+ same file name.</para>
</refsect1>
<refsect1>
<title>See Also</title>
<para>
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-sysctl.service</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-delta</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>sysctl</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>sysctl.conf</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>
</para>