diff --git a/man/runscript.8 b/man/runscript.8
index ef55de35..b87f8ef3 100644
--- a/man/runscript.8
+++ b/man/runscript.8
@@ -352,6 +352,9 @@ Default runlevel chosen. Default is default.
 .It Va RC_SYS
 A special variable to describe the system more.
 Possible values are OPENVZ, XENU, XEN0, UML and VSERVER.
+.It Va RC_PREFIX
+In a Gentoo Prefix installation, this variable contains the prefix
+offset. Otherwise it is undefined.
 .It Va RC_UNAME
 The result of `uname -s`.
 .El
diff --git a/src/librc/rc.h.in b/src/librc/rc.h.in
index e4cb60dd..32dbef08 100644
--- a/src/librc/rc.h.in
+++ b/src/librc/rc.h.in
@@ -33,6 +33,7 @@
 
 __BEGIN_DECLS
 
+#define RC_PREFIX "@PREFIX@"
 #define RC_SYSCONFDIR		"@SYSCONFDIR@"
 #define RC_LIBDIR               "@PREFIX@/@LIB@/rc"
 #define RC_LIBEXECDIR           "@LIBEXECDIR@"
diff --git a/src/rc/rc-misc.c b/src/rc/rc-misc.c
index 27397d71..e8f6ca6e 100644
--- a/src/rc/rc-misc.c
+++ b/src/rc/rc-misc.c
@@ -191,6 +191,10 @@ env_config(void)
 	if (sys)
 		setenv("RC_SYS", sys, 1);
 
+#ifdef PREFIX
+	setenv("RC_PREFIX", RC_PREFIX, 1);
+#endif
+
 	/* Some scripts may need to take a different code path if
 	   Linux/FreeBSD, etc
 	   To save on calling uname, we store it in an environment variable */