OpenRC
OpenRC is a service manager maintained by the Gentoo developers. OpenRC is dependency based and works with the system provided init program, normally SysVinit.
Installation
OpenRC and accompanying packages are available in the AUR. For details on init components, see Init.
Install either the openrcAUR or openrc-gitAUR package. From version 0.25 onward, OpenRC provides its own init at /usr/bin/openrc-init.
Optionally, you can use other inits from, e.g., busybox. Note that when openrc-init is used, it must be paired with openrc-shutdown, and not the or commands from other packages, otherwise you will encounter errors.
A basic set of service files are available from the package. Other packages may have service files provided outside this package; a search on the AUR is recommended.
To maintain compatibility with , configuration files are installed to .
Booting
For booting with OpenRC, set the init option in the kernel parameters.
To use OpenRC's built-in init, set init=/usr/bin/openrc-init.
To use SysVinit set .
Note that when using openrc-init, the file is not used.
Configuration
The directory, and the file is used for configuration.
For general information on configuring OpenRC, see:
For instructions when migrating from systemd, see Init#Configuration.
Services
OpenRC services are enabled by issuing as root. It is recommended to at least enable the following services:
| Service name | Runlevel | Description |
|---|---|---|
| udev | sysinit | Device hot-plugging |
| alsa | default | ALSA state |
| acpid | default | ACPI events |
| dbus | default | Messaging bus |
| dcron | default | Scheduling |
| syslog-ng | default | System logs |
If necessary, create services for each wanted getty by creating symbolic links to . E.g. for :
# ln -s /etc/openrc/init.d/agetty{,.tty1}
# rc-update add agetty.tty1 default
See also Gentoo:Systemd#Native services and Daemons.
Network
The network is configured through newnet . Modify the file; both the ip () and the () commands are supported. Below is an example configuration using ip.
The network service is added to the boot runlevel by default, so no further action is required. See Network configuration for general networking information.
Boot logs
To enable boot logging, uncomment the line in . When enabled, boot logs are stored in .
Hostname
OpenRC sets the hostname from /etc/openrc/conf.d/hostname. The file looks as follows:
Kernel modules
OpenRC uses instead of . For example:
/etc/openrc/conf.d/modules
# You should consult your kernel documentation and configuration # for a list of modules and their options. modules="vboxdrv acpi_cpufreq"
Locale
Keyboard layout can be configured via and . You can also configure the settings through the file, which is sourced via .
See Gentoo:Localization/Guide#Keyboard layout for the console and Locale for details.
Usage
This section draws a parallel between systemd and other init systems.
You can omit the and extensions, especially if temporarily editing the kernel parameters.
| systemd | SysVinit | OpenRC | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
systemctl list-units | List running services status | ||
| Check failed services | |||
| Display all available services. | |||
systemctl (start, stop, restart, status) daemon.service | Change service state. | ||
systemctl (enable, disable) daemon.service | Turn service on or off. | ||
| Create or modify configuration. |
Tips and tricks
Quiet booting
To hide boot messages from OpenRC, you can edit and add to every openrc command. For further information check with .
Troubleshooting
Error while unmounting /tmp
When shutting the system down, you might get an error message such as
This can be fixed by adding
no_umounts="/tmp"
to /etc/openrc/conf.d/localmount
Disabling IPv6 does not work
One option is to add:
# Disable ipv6 net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1
in a file with a extension under /etc/openrc/sysctl.d
During shutdown remounting root as read-only fails
If the above happens, edit the file and put:
telinit u
after the following line:
# Flush all pending disk writes now sync; sync
/etc/sysctl.conf not found
By default, is called to load the sysctl configuration. This includes the file, which was removed from Arch.
To prevent a missing file error, create the file:
# touch /etc/sysctl.conf
opentmpfiles-setup failed to start
On booting openrc, you may see lines like these :
* Setting up tmpfiles.d entries ... chattr: Operation not supported while setting flags on /var/log/journal chattr: No such file or directory while trying to stat /var/log/journal/%m chattr: Operation not supported while setting flags on /var/log/journal/remote [ !! ] ERROR: opentmpfiles-setup failed to start
This is caused by using options that are only valid if journal is on a btrfs filesystem.
See https://github.com/OpenRC/opentmpfiles/issues/2 for details
A workaround is to create an empty /etc/tmpfiles.d/journal-nocow.conf to override the settings.
Reverting to systemd
Reverting to systemd should be straightforward in most cases. It is essentially the reversal of migrating to OpenRC, with care placed on the following:
- Removal of, or otherwise editing, the parameter on the kernel command line
- Replacement of any OpenRC-tailored or no-systemd packages with their stock equivalents (e.g. replacement of with dbus)