systemd 261-rc1 Released With OS Installer, IMDS Subsystem & New storagectl - Phoronix

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systemd 261-rc1 Released With OS Installer, IMDS Subsystem & New storagectl

Written by Michael Larabel in systemd on 22 May 2026 at 10:27 AM EDT. 34 Comments

The first release candidate of systemd 261 is out today and it includes yet more features for this Linux init system and service manager.

Systemd 261 brings new features including systemd-sysinstall as a Linux OS installer of sorts for modern environments, the Instance Metadata Service "IMDS" for expanded systemd functionality on cloud VMs, a new storagectl command, and many other additions and improvements to existing features.

Some of the release highlights of systemd 261-rc1 include:

- A new subsystem with systemd 261 is the Instance Metadata Service "IMDS". This includes the new systemd-imdsd that makes IMDS services accessible to local programs. There is also a hardware database for recognizing established public clouds via SMBIOS information such as for Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, Google COmpute Engine, Oracle Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Hetzner, and others. This makes for a nice unified way of accessing virtual machine metadata from systemd.

- Systemd 261 is also introducing storagectl as a new command-line tool and Varlink interface for exposing storage resources in a unified manner for use as managed user storage.

- There is also now systemd-sysinstall that provides a simple, modern textual installer for an OS. This wraps around systemd's partitioning capabilities, credential management, and other system management functionality while copying the OS from a temporary boot medium like a USB drive.

- A new service systemd-tpm2-swtpm.service for running the IBM Software TPM "swtpm" for an automatic fallback on systems that lack a pysical TPM but where TPM functionality should be made available.

- A new tmpfiles.d/root.conf for ensuring that root directory permissions get set to 0555.

- PID1 now supports the Linux kernel's Live Update Orchestrator "LUO" and Kernel Handover "KHO" capabilities.

- User session managers now support persisting user units' FD Stores

- A new unit setting of CPUSetPartition= allows for configuring the CPU set cgroup partition type such as root, isolated, or member for systemd services.

- There is a new setting of RestrictFileSystemAccess= that leverages a BPF LSM program for restricting execution to only binaries that are stored on a signed and verified DM-VERITY protected file-system.

- New Varlink methods for the systemd manager interface for requesting system shutdown.

- DefaultMemoryZSwapWriteback= is a new manager setting for a system-wide default of the Zswap writeback setting over the existing per-unit setting.

More details on the many systemd 261-rc1 changes via GitHub.

34 Comments

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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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systemd 261-rc1 Released With OS...