The sysconfig directory in Redhat-based Linux

Redhat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, and Centos have a convenient directory called “sysconfig”. It is located under the main /etc directory and contains many of the frequently-used configuration files necessary to operate a server. Often the configuration files are for command line options or very specific settings rather than the complete settings for a particular application.

For example, the httpd file under sysconfig is the configuration for the httpd server rather than Apache as a whole. In it you can set startup options and command flags. Other configuration files include crond (for configuring the crontab frequency), syslog (which configures the system log rotation), and spamassassin (setup for the spam filtering service).

One of the most important folders in sysconfig is “networking“. This is where a user sets up network devices, and devices that are automatically setup appear here as well. You would only need to configure this file if you were running a locally housed server. If your server is remote, this will never need to be changed and attempting to change it could cause you to lose the ability to access the server at all. I recommend browsing through the complete list of files in /etc/sysconfig and at least becoming aware of them, in case you need one of them in the future.