By default Gentoo uses OpenRC as it’s init system. I have used systemd in the past so I decided to try converting Gentoo to use systemd as it’s init system. Most of the steps are laid out here.

Prepare the Kernel

I was using the default linux sources so I just had to enable the following option:

Gentoo Linux --->
        Support for init systems, system and service managers --->
                [*] systemd

Here are the steps I took to recompile the kernel (and the modules… just in case):

cd /usr/src/linux
sudo make menuconfig **(enable the above option)**
sudo cp .config ../.
sudo make distclean
sudo cp ../.config .
sudo make oldconfig
sudo make -j2
sudo make install
sudo make modules
sudo make modules_install

Initially I used genkernel to generate the initramfs but I kept running into issues with mounting non-root LVM partitions (systemd and lvm: timed out), so I tried genkernel-next and the issue went away. Here is what I ran to update genkernel:

sudo emerge -ac genkernel
sudo emerge -av genkernel-next

And here is what I ran to generate the new initramfs:

sudo genkernel --install --udev --lvm --no-ramdisk-modules initramfs

To ensure LVM partitions work out either enable lvmetad by having the following option in /etc/lvm/lvm/conf:

use_lvmetad = 1

Or just enable the following services (after systemd is installed):

sudo systemctl enable lvm2-lvmetad
sudo systemctl enable lvm2-monitor

Last thing to do is create a symlink for /etc/mtab:

sudo ln -sf /proc/self/mounts /etc/mtab

Installing Systemd

I decided to enable the systemd USE flag globally, here is what I enabled (and disabled):

sudo euse -E systemd
sudo euse -D consolekit

and I also enabled the following at the package level:

$ cat /etc/portage/package.use/systemd
sys-apps/systemd gudev policykit

Now if I run emerge with the –newuse flag it will install the necessary packages. Here is what I ran to accomplish that:

sudo emerge -avDN @world

GRUB Configuration

To enable GRUB2 to use systemd we need to modify the following option under the /etc/default/grub file:

$grep ^GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX /etc/default/grub 
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="dolvm init=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd"

and then we need to regenerate the GRUB configuration:

sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

At this point we can reboot and the OS will boot up.

Post systemd install

After I rebooted I noticed that networking didn’t come up nor did the Display Manager (lightdm). So here is what I did to get gentoo back to the original state.

Configure Static IP

Systemd has a service (systemd-networkd) that can take of this, so first let’s create the config:

$ cat /etc/systemd/network/static.network
[Match]
Name=enp0s25

[Network]
Address=192.168.1.114/24
Gateway=192.168.1.1

Then I enabled the service to start on boot and lastly I started the service:

sudo systemctl enable systemd-networkd.service
sudo systemctl start systemd-networkd.service

Lastly I set the hostname:

sudo hostnamectl set-hostname gentoo.dnsd.me

Start missing services

Here are the services that had to re-enable after switching to systemd:

sudo systemctl enable lightdm.service
sudo systemctl enable bluetooth.service
sudo systemctl enable syslog-ng.service
sudo systemctl enable vixie-cron.service

Disable IPv6

For some reason systemd kept trying to enable the ipv6 module during boot up (I didn’t have anything under /etc/modules-load.d or /usr/lib/modules-load.d) so I ended creating a blacklist config:

$cat /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf 
blacklist ipv6

And then after regenerating initramfs one more time:

sudo genkernel --install --udev --lvm --no-ramdisk-modules initramfs

After a reboot the modules wasn’t loaded any more, I had a static IP, and lightdm loaded .