12. Basic System Configuration

We choose Configure System.

At this point you will realize how simple is Arch from how its conf files are organized.
They are organized so that
- almost all settings are in on file /etc/rc.conf
- the settings are well commented
- configure them once and most probably you won’t do this again.
So, at this point you will open the conf files one by one, do the recommended changes save and exit.
Choose nano as editor.
Use Ctrl+O for saving and Ctrl+X for exiting.

Let’s start.

- /etc/rc.conf

This is Arch’s basic conf file.
We are interested in the following lines.

LOCALIZATION Part:
(choose your own timezone) 

LOCALE="en_US.utf8"
HARDWARECLOCK="localtime"
TIMEZONE="Europe/Athens"
KEYMAP="us"

HARDWARE Part: 

MOD_AUTOLOAD="yes"
MOD_BLACKLIST=()
USELVM="no"

Moreover: 

MODULES=(powernow-k8 forcedeth r8169 sk98lin skge sky2)

Here you set:

- the kernel modules that will be loaded in the beginning
- the order they will be loaded with
This line is very important for computers with more than one network cards. This way you will know what is the name of each card very easily.
So, put the kernel modules for your Ethernet cards in the order you want them to be loaded. The first one will be named eth0, and the second one eth1 etc.
e.g. Some common kernel modules for network interfaces are:

- nVidia nForce chipsets -> forcedeth
- Realtek 8169 -> r8169
- Marvell Yukon -> sk98lin ή skge

You don’t have to add a new one, just select the order you want.

At this part you can choose the module for your cpu’s PowerSaving Governor (only if your processor supports power throttling. If you don’t have a processor like that ignore it).
Processors which support power throttling are AMD Athlon64(X2) (and their equivalent Opteron/Sempron) as well as Intel Pentium-4 and Core (2) Solo/Duo (and their equivalent Xeon/Celeron)

Now we must find what is the name of the kernel module for our processor. The name will be different according to our cpu’s architecture.
e.g. for AMD K8 it is: 

powernow-k8.ko

while for core2 it is: 

acpi-cpufreq.ko

We note down the name without the dot and the suffix. (e.g. powernow-k8)
That’s all for the correct module. If you don’t know it we will refer to this point again later.
However, if you set a power throttling module be sure that it is the first one you have in the list.
Let’s say that our system is like the following one:
 

MODULES=(powernow-k8 forcedeth r8169)

What we have configured here:
a. an AMD K8 cpu which supports power throttling.
b. two network interfaces that will be loaded with this order no matter what:
----> nVidia nForce
----> Realtek 8169

We continue with /etc/rc.conf

NETWORKING Part:
 

HOSTNAME="neo"

Here we put our computers name. It can be anything we want as far as it has small letters. We have chosen neo.
 

lo="lo 127.0.0.1"

We don’t change this line: 

eth0="eth0 192.168.1.7 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255"

For each network interface we should use a line like the above. First we select our interface’s name, next its IP address like 192.168.1.7 (192.168.1.x generally) and then netmask and broadcast.
If we have two interfaces we will use one more line like this:
 

eth1="eth1 192.168.0.41 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.0.255"

Moreover: 

INTERFACES=(lo eth0)

Here we set all the interfaces we want to be enabled during the boot process, don’t forget lo.
If we have more than one network interface:
 

INTERFACES=(lo eth0 eth1)