Configure System Settings

Installing Gentoo - Configure System Settings

Windows users will be familiar the registry, which stores system settings in a proprietary database spanned across two files named system.dat and user.dat. Both of these files are susceptible to corruption, tampering and security issues, and a Windows system cannot boot without them. Almost every setting in a Linux system is stored in a text-based configuration file stored somewhere within the filesystem. All of these files are accessible from a command prompt and can be modified using a simple text editor such as nano.

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Using nano

• Open files for writing using the command nano -w /path/to/file
• Search for text using Ctrl-w (press Ctrl-w again to find next instance)
• Delete an entire line of text using Ctrl-k
• Save the file and exit nano using Ctrl-x

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There are many options in Linux for setting the system clock. By setting the clock to local, it will read the time from the system BIOS. Set the timezone here as well.

# nano -w /etc/conf.d/clock

file: /etc/conf.d/clock

CLOCK="local"
...
TIMEZONE="America/Vancouver"

To finish setting the system time zone, you can create a symbolic link to the file relating to your region stored in /usr/share/zoneinfo/. In this example I use the Canada Pacific (Vancouver) setting.

# unlink /etc/localtime
# ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Canada/Pacific /etc/localtime

For your system to be recognized by name by others on the network you'll need to set the hostname. Your system's hostname is stored in the file /etc/conf.d/hostname. Simply replace yourcomputersname with your computer's name.

# nano -w /etc/conf.d/hostname

file: /etc/conf.d/hostname

HOSTNAME="yourcomputersname"

The system domain is set in the file /etc/conf.d/net. Simply replace yourdomain with your domain.

# nano -w /etc/conf.d/net

file: /etc/conf.d/net

...
dns_domain_lo="yourdomain"
...

To complete the networking configuration we'll configure our /etc/hosts file. This is the same as the C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file in Windows. As

# nano -w /etc/hosts

file: /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1	yourcomputersname.domain.com	yourcomptuersname	localhost	

The locations of the drives and partitions to be mounted when the system boots are kept in a file called /etc/fstab, which is an abbreviation of file system table. Your system probably came with an example fstab so you'll just need to make the appropriate edits.

# nano -w /etc/fstab

file: /etc/fstab

###########################
#
# gr0x0rd's fstab
#
###########################

/dev/sda1		/boot		ext2		noauto,noatime,user	1 2
/dev/sda3		/		ext3		noatime		0 1
/dev/sda2		none		swap		sw		0 0
#/dev/cdrom		/mnt/cdrom	auto		noauto,user	0 0
#/dev/fd0		/mnt/floppy	auto		noauto		0 0

# glibc 2.2 and above expects tmpfs to be mounted at /dev/shm for 
# POSIX shared memory (shm_open, shm_unlink).
# (tmpfs is a dynamically expandable/shrinkable ramdisk, and will
#  use almost no memory if not populated with files)
shm			/dev/shm	tmpfs		nodev,nosuid,noexec	0 0

To complete the basic system settings, we'll set the root password. This will be the most important password in your Gentoo Linux system, and if you're fortunate you'll never have to use it: however, make a note of not forgetting it. You'll need to enter it twice to set it successfully.

# passwd

Now that your root password has been set, you can Configure make.conf.