<refsect1>
<title>Description</title>
- <para><command>systemd</command> uses configuration files
- from the above directories to configure
+ <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>
+ kernel parameters during boot.</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>
+ <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>/run/</filename> override files
+ with the same name in <filename>/usr/lib/</filename>.
+ Files in <filename>/etc</filename> override files with
+ the same name in <filename>/run/</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
+ administrator, who may use this logic to override the
+ configuration installed by vendor packages. All
+ configuration files are sorted by their name 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> carrying with the
+ same name.</para>
</refsect1>
<refsect1>