Configuration files

The next place a program looks for configuration is in its configuration files. Where a program looks for configuration can vary wildly, but there are a few standard places to look.

System-level configuration in /etc/

First, the /etc/ directory is a good place to start. You’ve seen this directory before, in Chapter 5, Introducing Files. /etc/programname – where programname is a stand-in for the name of the program you’re interested in configuring – is a common choice of directory for software to keep system-wide configuration. For many programs, that’s enough. For example, the nginx web server is a system-level program: different users aren’t commonly running their own instances of web servers on a single machine, so a system-wide configuration is all that’s needed.

That said, configuration for large or complex programs can still be broken up inside of the /etc/programname directory. Nginx is a good example...