diff --git a/src/openvpn/init.c b/src/openvpn/init.c
index fb0d0dec..26b236de 100644
--- a/src/openvpn/init.c
+++ b/src/openvpn/init.c
@@ -967,7 +967,27 @@ do_uid_gid_chroot (struct context *c, bool no_delay)
       if (c->options.chroot_dir)
 	{
 	  if (no_delay)
-	    platform_chroot (c->options.chroot_dir);
+            {
+#ifdef ENABLE_SYSTEMD
+              /* If OpenVPN is started by systemd, the OpenVPN process needs
+               * to provide a preliminary status report to systemd.  This is
+               * needed as $NOTIFY_SOCKET will not be available inside the
+               * chroot, which sd_notify()/sd_notifyf() depends on.
+               *
+               * This approach is the simplest and the most non-intrusive
+               * solution right before the 2.4_rc2 release.
+               *
+               * TODO: Consider altnernative solutions - bind mount?
+               * systemd does not grok OpenVPN configuration files, thus cannot
+               * have a sane way to know if OpenVPN will chroot or not and to
+               * which subdirectory it will chroot into.
+               */
+              sd_notifyf(0, "READY=1\n"
+                "STATUS=Entering chroot, most of the init completed successfully\n"
+                "MAINPID=%lu", (unsigned long) getpid());
+#endif
+              platform_chroot (c->options.chroot_dir);
+            }
 	  else if (c->first_time)
 	    msg (M_INFO, "NOTE: chroot %s", why_not);
 	}