Title: Varnish Renamed
Author: Brett A C Sheffield <bacs@librecast.net>
Posted: 2026-03-31
Revision: 3
News-Item-Format: 2.0
Display-If-Installed: www-servers/vinyl-cache

# Varnish Renamed to Vinyl-Cache

As of version 9.0.0, www-servers/varnish has been renamed to
www-servers/vinyl-cache in line with upstream's change of name[0][1][2]. The name
change also affects binaries, directories, init scripts, configuration and the
user and group used by the server daemon.

If you are upgrading from a previous version of www-servers/varnish you will
need to update your configuration as described in "Upgrading" below.


# Changes

All varnish* binaries have been renamed to their vinyl* equivalents:

 varnishd                  -> vinyld
 varnishlog                -> vinyllog
 varnishncsa               -> vinylncsa
 varnishadm                -> vinyladm
 varnishhist               -> vinylhist
 varnishstat               -> vinylstat
 varnishstat_help_gen      -> vinylstat_help_gen
 varnishstatdiff           -> vinylstatdiff
 varnishtest               -> vinyltest
 varnishtop                -> vinyltop

This name change also affects all related conf.d/* files, init scripts,
systemd service files, logrotate etc.

The api library has been renamed:
 libvarnishapi.so -> libvinylapi.so

In these conf.d files, all VARNISH* options are now VINYL* and you will need to
update your configuration accordingly:

 /etc/conf.d/varnishd      -> /etc/conf.d/vinyld
 /etc/conf.d/varnishlog    -> /etc/conf.d/vinyllog
 /etc/conf.d/varnishncsa   -> /etc/conf.d/vinylncsa

The configuration directory has been moved:
 /etc/varnish/ -> /etc/vinyl-cache/

Other varnish directories have also been renamed:

 /usr/include/varnish      -> /usr/include/vinyl-cache
 /usr/lib/varnish          -> /usr/lib/vinyl-cache
 /usr/lib64/varnish        -> /usr/lib64/vinyl-cache
 /usr/share/varnish        -> /usr/share/vinyl-cache
 /var/lib/varnish          -> /var/lib/vinyl-cache
 /var/log/varnish          -> /var/log/vinyl-cache


# Upgrading

To upgrade from varnish 8.x to 9.x:

0) Take a backup of your existing configuration files
1) Stop all running varnish services
2) emerge --oneshot www-servers/vinyl-cache
3) Update and install your VCL files in /etc/vinyl-cache/

You can now start the new vinyld, vinyllog and vinylncsa services, remembering
to add them to the appropriate runlevels as usual. Ditto systemd services.

For more details of the changes, you are encouraged to read the upstream
announcement[0].


# Refs

[0] https://vinyl-cache.org/docs/9.0/whats-new/upgrading-9.0.html
[1] https://vinyl-cache.org/organization/20-years.html
[2] https://vinyl-cache.org/organization/new-identity.html