systemctl

Manage services: start, stop, start at boot

What it does

Services such as nginx, databases or your own app are run by systemd on modern distributions, and you manage them with systemctl. status shows whether a service is running and the latest lines of its log; press q to leave the view.

start, stop and restart start, stop and restart a service, and reload rereads its settings without stopping it, if the service supports that. enable makes it start at boot, and --now also starts it right away. Everything but status needs sudo.

Syntax

systemctl status <service>
sudo systemctl start|stop|restart <service>
sudo systemctl reload <service>
sudo systemctl enable --now <service>

Examples

• Check whether the nginx service is running

  systemctl status nginx

  • systemctl — manage systemd services
  • status — the state and the latest log lines
  • nginx — the service

• Restart nginx

  sudo systemctl restart nginx

  • sudo — needs admin rights
  • restart — stop and start again
  • nginx — the service

• Make nginx start at boot and start it right now

  sudo systemctl enable --now nginx

  • enable — start at system boot
  • --now — and start it right away
  • nginx — the service

Related commands

• journalctl — Read the logs of services and the system
• ss — Find out which ports are open and who listens on them
• kill — End a process by its ID

Practise · All commands