How To Install / Upgrade systemd on RHEL/CentOS 7.0

Centos/RHEL already adopted using systemd from version 7.0. In this article, we explore how this new upgrade release systemd 216 can be installed. The new release of systemd brings some new features. New commands like networkctl are introduced in this new version.

1. Check Current systemd Version

First of all, we proceed with checking the current version of systemd:

[root@linoxide systemd-216]# systemctl --version

2. Get new tar for update

We can get the package using wget command:

[root@linoxide ~]# wget http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/systemd-216.tar.xz

3. Extract the file

The downloaded package is an XZ compressed file. We use -J switch of tar command to extract the package:

[root@linoxide ~]# tar -xJf systemd-216.tar.xz

Descend into the newly created directory:

[root@linoxide ~]# cd systemd-216
[root@linoxide systemd-216]# pwd
/root/systemd-216

4. Pre-installation preparation

In order to successfully run the configure script, following packages are required to be installed:

gcc
intltool
gperf
glib2-devel

[root@linoxide systemd-216]# yum install gcc intltool gperf glib2-devel

5. Configure

Now lets try to configure the package with configure script.

[root@linoxide systemd-216]# ./configure

You might get error like in the following screen with the configure script:

5.1 Install additional packages required

Installing the libcap-devel package will remove this error with configure script:

[root@linoxide systemd-216]# yum -y install libcap-devel

If it asks you to install additional packages, install those as well. For my system, it could not found libzmz package.

Install xz-devel to remove this error.

[root@linoxide systemd-216]# yum search xz-devel

6. Compile

Once the configure script is complete, we proceed with the compilation with make command.

[root@linoxide systemd-216]# make

It may take a while for this command to complete depending on the system configuration.

You can check if the last command executed successfully with following command:

[root@linoxide systemd-216]# echo $?
0

7. Install systemd

Now we install this new version with make install

[root@linoxide systemd-216]# make install

If everything worked fine, you will be able to see the newly installed version:

[root@linoxide systemd-216]# systemctl --version

You can also check that the networkctl commnad is working with this new version.

[root@linoxide ~]# networkctl --help

It may be wise to reboot the system before u start using the new version.