Amid the growing scale and complexity of software systems, their configuration has become an essential topic in the field of software engineering. Massive complicated configuration entries bring difficulties in correctly deploying and using software systems; for instance, misconfigurations will lead to performance degradation and significant losses. Researchers are devoted to handling software configuration, mainly for resolving software misconfiguration. This paper presents a systematic literature review on the work of software configuration, including the research status and main achievements. It first proposes a two-dimensional analysis framework for the research work from the perspectives of software lifecycle and techniques. Based on this framework, this paper analyzes and categorizes the state-of-the-art results. Finally, it summarizes the characteristics of the current work and envisions beneficial prospects of future work.