How to Use Systemctl Command to Manage Systemd Services

The “systemctl” command interacts with systemd to manage services, also known as units, in your system by providing options like listing, starting, stopping, restarting, reloading, etc.

Tutorial Details

Description	Managing Systemd Services and Units
Difficulty Level	Moderate
Root or Sudo Privileges	Yes
Host System and Architecture	Ubuntu 22.10 (x64)
OS Compatibility	Ubuntu, Manjaro, Fedora, etc.
Prerequisites	systemctl
Internet Required	No

• Systemctl Mask vs Systemctl Disable

List Services

The following command will list all the running and stopped systemd services.

$ systemctl list-unit-files

List All Running Services

The following command will only list the running systemd services with the help of the grep command.

$ systemctl list-unit-files | grep enabled

Or you can execute the following command to get the list of running services in the tree hierarchy.

$ systemctl status

List of Failed Services

In some cases, the systemd services get interrupted by another running process or a configuration error that you can list using the following command.

$ systemctl --failed

Start/Stop/Restart/Reload a Services

Specify the systemd service name to start the service.

$ sudo systemctl start [SERVICE-NAME]

To stop the existing running service, place its unit name in the following command.

$ sudo systemctl stop [SERVICE-NAME]

If you want to restart your service, pass the unit name to the following command.

$ sudo systemctl restart [SERVICE-NAME]

Don’t forget to consider that the above command will prevent your users from accessing your service if you are restarting a service like Apache or NGINX.

If you made a minor configuration change, reload the service instead of restarting by using the following command.

$ sudo systemctl reload [SERVICE-NAME]

Check the Status of Service

To check the status of a service, specify its unit name in the following command.

$ systemctl status [SERVICE-NAME]

Find the Service is Enabled

Issue the following command to find out if the service is enabled (an enabled service will automatically start on boot).

$ systemctl is-enabled [SERVICE-NAME]

Auto start Service on Boot

If you want to start your service automatically on system boot, then enable it using the following command.

$ sudo systemctl enable [SERVICE-NAME]

Disable Auto Start Service

If you want to disable an existing enabled service that automatically starts on system boot, then issue the following command.

$ sudo systemctl disable [SERVICE-NAME]

Reloading Systemd

If you made any changes to your system or added a systemd service, then execute the following command to reload the systemd daemon for scanning new or changed services.

$ systemctl daemon-reload

That’s all for now, Bye bye.