After nearly six months of preparation, we feel Chakra is ready to perform this very big switch. Hopefully you'll take the time to read this full post, but the most important anyone needs to know, next time you'll use pacman -Syu, you'll get a big warning in the pacman update, then use the following line instead:

sudo pacman -Syu --ignore filesystem && sudo pacman -S filesystem --force && sudo pacman -S chakra-init

Plus, ABSOLUTELY DO NOT USE the force switch (-Syuf) for this update.


A rolling distro does not have the luxury to wait for a semi-annual complete new install for all users, so any truly large change will need user interaction to make such a move. We tried our best to make it as automated as possible, but this is by far the biggest change Chakra has made in its two and a half years as an independent Distro. There are many reasons to move to systemd, a Forum thread to explain the reason and discuss further, was started some time ago. Please read the link in that first post, it gives a very clear explanation why the move.

What all is changing because of this update?

• Systemd and udev are merged into one (systemd) package

• Consolekit is removed, handled now by logind and polkit

• A transitional package (chakra-init) introduced to automate a good part of the switch

• Initscripts, sysvinit, initscripts-systemd are all obsolete now, and removed from the repo's

• Mesa is merged into just 3 packages, down from about 15

• Libpulse is merged into pulseaudio, all sound related packages rebuild to use pulse by default

• Most common needed services from rc.conf DAEMON line are enabled in this switch

• KDE updated to 4.9.2

• Kernel updated to linux-3.5.6

• About 150-200 more packages updated or rebuild to prepare them for the switch

What is the best way to approach this update?

This News article is posted a few days before this whole update will move to stable. By this weekend, make sure your mirrors have fully synced (you can check by running pacman -Syu, if you have a pacman update, they are synced). Check your /etc/rc.conf DAEMON line, see what all you have initscript start for you. Network, kdm, avahi and those services needed for these are already enabled. Any you have extra like cups, you will have to enable again after the switch, systemd way (instead of DAEMON line):

sudo systemctl enable cups.service

Replace "cups" by any other service you have running. Full list of any possible service to enable, you can find in /usr/lib/systemd/system.

To start a service just one time (need to be redone on each reboot):

sudo systemctl start cups.service

Once you have noted what is in your DAEMON line, perform the update:

sudo pacman -Syu --ignore filesystem && sudo pacman -S filesystem --force && sudo pacman -S chakra-init

There will be many questions about conflicts and replaces, answer all with "Yes".

If the very last part of the update (pacman -S chakra-init) returns with one or two errors, repeat this step, as systemd might not have been fully initialized at this point. Repeating this package install will ensure all needed services are enabled.

Again DO NOT FORCE this update, it will irreversibly break your install.

For any questions, problems, needed help, please use the Forum thread opened for this.