27. Daemons Configuration

Now, let’s configure our system’s “Daemons” or in other words our system’s “Services”
If you remember we have mentioned before that Arch is very good at this part.

Open Midnight Commander:

mc

Let’s fix (with F4) the following file.

/etc/rc.conf

Midnight Commander is better than nano since it supports easier Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete.

We are interested on the last line DAEMONS=:

We have left it like this:

DAEMONS=(syslog-ng network netfs @crond @sshd)

Be careful because if anything goes wrong the system won’t boot.
Remember the following for the daemons:
- The system starts the daemons with the order it reads them from this line, from left to right.
- Each daemon has to start completely to move on to the next one. This can be bypassed by putting “@” in front of it.

- Some daemons in order to start demand other daemons to have been started first. If they don’t find them “ready”, the system stops from booting.
 - If a daemon needs other daemons it should be placed at the right of them.

- If a daemon is needed by other daemons it should be at the left of them and it should be started without a @.
- We put an @ in front of the daemons that aren’t needed by other daemons.
 - It isn’t necessary to use all of the following daemons. It will be noted which of them are compulsory. No matter which ones of them you will use don’t change the order or the @ in front of them.

- Instead of completely removing a daemon you can add a “!” in front of it.
This is a recommended order safe to use. It is also pretty fast. 

DAEMONS=(syslog-ng network portmap netfs @crond nfslock @nfsd @samba acpid sensors dbus @hal @alsa !cpufreq @cups @smartd @openntpd @sshd @gdm)

If yoy have only KDE installed in your system, instead of @gdm use @kdm.

Note the exclamation mark in front of the cpufreq daemon. This daemon refers to Power Throttling of our cpu. Not all cpus support it. Change it to your needs.
Next we press F2 for save and F10 for exit.

We should also configure a few more useful daemons.
openntpd (It is for automatically adjusting our computer’s time):

Let’s change (with F4) the following file:

/etc/ntpd.conf

Here we have two options, depending if we have a local network with other computers or not.
If we don’t have a lan: 

server ntp.forthnet.gr

We use a line like the above where we place our ISP’s ntp server. To you it would be different of course.
If we have a lan we can configure our computer to act as a local ntp server like this: 

listen on 127.0.0.1
listen on 192.168.1.7

where in the second line we place our computer’s static IP address.

Press F2 for Save and F10 to exit.
Then in all the other computers of our network in the same file we add this line: 

server 192.168.1.7

 
smartmond (for viewing the SMART elements of our hard disk drives.)
 
Let’s change (with F4) the following file:

/etc/smartd.conf

In the beginning we will find this line: 

DEVICESCAN

Comment it: 

#DEVICESCAN

At the end add a line like this one for each drive we have: 

/dev/sda -a -d sat

Press F2 for Save and F10 to exit.
Go to the root directory "/" in Midnight Commander's windows and exit with F10.

To get information about your hard disk type:

smartctl -a /dev/sda

Replace sda with your own device.