OpenRC to systemd Cheatsheet

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This article is for users that have recently converted from OpenRC to systemd. It contains a list of commands commonly used in OpenRC and its equivalent systemd command.

Note
The following table is not an exhaustive list and is not intended to replace reading man pages.

Command	OpenRC	systemd	Comments
Start a service	/etc/init.d/<service> start rc-service <service> start	systemctl start <service>
Stop a service	/etc/init.d/<service> stop rc-service <service> stop	systemctl stop <service>
Restart a service	/etc/init.d/<service> restart rc-service <service> restart	systemctl restart <service>
Get service status	/etc/init.d/<service> status rc-service <service> status	systemctl status <service>
Show known startup scripts	rc-status rc-update show	systemctl list-units	Shows scripts that exist in runlevels
Show all startup scripts	ls /etc/init.d/ rc-update -v show	systemctl list-unit-files --type=service	Shows all installed scripts
Enable service at startup	rc-update add <service> <runlevel>	systemctl enable <service>
Disable service at startup	rc-update del <service> <runlevel>	systemctl disable <service>
Disable service altogether	chmod 444 /etc/init.d/<service>	systemctl mask <service>	The service cannot be run until unmasked.
Cancels 'masking' service	chmod 555 /etc/init.d/<service>	systemctl unmask <service>

The following table is a list of useful systemd commands that have no OpenRC equivalent:

Command	Syntax	Comments
To be run after creating or modifying services	systemctl daemon-reload
Kill all processes related to service	systemctl kill <service>
Show logs events that happened today, most recent events first	journalctl -r --since=today
Show log events for a specific service	journalctl _SYSTEMD_UNIT=<service>.service

Runlevels

In systemd, what correpsponds to runlevels are called "targets", but the latter is more general. Services can be set to run before and after targets. In particular, runlevel<N>.target (N = 0...6) roughly mimicks runlevels.

See Systemd#Targets in Arch Wiki for introduction. All pre-defined targets are found in the man page systemd.special (7).

/etc/local.d

In OpenRC, scripts /etc/local.d/*start are started at system startup and *stop are run at shutdown. To port them to systemd with minimal changes, one can create the service local.d.start:

FILE /etc/systemd/system/local.d.start.service

[Unit]
Description=Run /etc/local.d scripts at start
Before=runlevel3.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/foo/bar/baz

[Install]
WantedBy=runlevel3.target

Here we chose runlevel3 as the target, but one can change this. This service will run the script /for/bar/baz, which should look like:

FILE /foo/bar/baz

#!/bin/bash

for i in /etc/local.d/*start; do
    if [[ -x "$i" ]]; then
        "$i" &
    fi
done

The path of /foo/bar/baz is not standardized. Some suggest /usr/local/bin. /usr/local is for sysadmin installing something locally, according to FHS. (The contributor of this section personally thinks it is too general, and would like to suggest something like /usr/local/libexec/systemd/ for example.)

Similarly one can create a *stop service. They have to be enabled to take effect.

OpenRC to systemd Cheatsheet

Runlevels

/etc/local.d

See also