This tutorial is a guide to help setting up systemd on Gentoo. systemd is a modern sysvinit and RC replacement for Linux systems. This article is based on the official Gentoo article on systemd.
Kernel Configuration-
Mandatory options:
General setup —>
[*] Control Group support
[ ] Enable deprecated sysfs features to support old userspace tools
[*] Networking support —>
Device Drivers —>
Generic Driver Options —>
[*] Maintain a devtmpfs filesystem to mount at /dev
File systems —>
[*] Inotify support for userspace
[*] Filesystem wide access notification
Recommended options:
General setup —>
[*] open by fhandle syscalls
Processor type and features —>
[*] Enable seccomp to safely compute untrusted bytecode
Networking support —>
Networking options —>
<*> The IPv6 protocol
Device Drivers —>
Generic Driver Options —>
() path to uevent helper
Firmware Drivers —>
[*] Export DMI identification via sysfs to userspace
File systems —>
<*> Kernel automounter version 4 support (also supports v3)
Pseudo filesystems —>
[*] Tmpfs virtual memory file system support (former shm fs)
[*] Tmpfs POSIX Access Control Lists
[*] Tmpfs extended attributes
systemd-bootchart support
File systems —>
Pseudo filesystems —>
[*] /proc file system support
Kernel hacking —>
[*] Kernel debugging
[*] Collect scheduler debugging info
[*] Collect scheduler statistics
UEFI support
[*] Enable the block layer —>
Partition Types —>
[*] Advanced partition selection
[*] EFI GUID Partition support
Processor type and features —>
[*] EFI runtime service support
Firmware Drivers —>
<*> EFI Variable Support via sysfs
Filesystem Changes:
/etc/mtab symlink to /proc/self/mounts
# ln -sf /proc/self/mounts /etc/mtab
Other filesystem changes like creation of /run directory and /etc/machine-id is automatically handled by the sys-apps/systemd and sys-apps/dbus packages respectively.
Software Installation
The Gentoo article states it is necessary to install the systemd package before enabling the USE flag:
# emerge -av systemd
Now, enable global USE flag systemd:
# nano -w /etc/portage/make.conf USE="... systemd ..."
After setting this, update your system so the changes take effect:
# emerge -avuND @world
Configuration files
File containing the system hostname:
/etc/hostname tux
Configuration file specifying console font and keymap:
/etc/vconsole.conf KEYMAP=us FONT=default8x16
Configuration file for locale settings:
/etc/locale.conf LANG="en_US.UTF-8" LC_COLLATE="C"
Configuration file for local machine information:
/etc/machine-info PRETTY_NAME="Home Computer" ICON_NAME="computer-laptop"
Enabling systemd
Edit your GRUB configuration file and add the following to your kernel line:
real_init=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd
Example Grub entry:
menuentry 'Gentoo Base System release 2.1'
{
insmod part_msdos
insmod ext2
set root='hd0,msdos3'
linux /boot/kernel-3.8.13-gentoo root=/dev/sda3 real_init=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd
initrd /boot/initramfs-3.8.13-gentoo
}
Finally, reboot to enjoy the benefits of systemd.
