Command line: systemctl

The go-to command to manage units in a systemd-ful system.

For full details, you can view the systemctl.1 manual page.

Synopsis

systemctl [OPTIONS...] COMMAND [COMMAND_ARGS...] [COMMAND_OPTIONS...]

Options

• --user runs the binary in user mode with the user-specific options and load-path. See systemd at user-level for more details.

• --help is an obvious one. It prints a detailed help section of the command.

Subcommands

• enable UNIT and disable UNIT enables and disables units. It mainly adds the unit activation at startup.

  • --now starts/stops the unit. It is the equivalent of systemctl {enable,disable} UNIT && systemctl {start,stop} UNIT. Pretty handy if you intend to add the unit at startup and want to use it now.

• start UNIT and stop UNIT starts and stops the unit, respectively. Though, this doesn't activate

• restart UNIT restarts the given unit. This also reloads with the modified changes of the unit.

• In some cases where restarting the unit isn't enough, daemon-reload will reload the daemon with the modified units. systemd does not have reload-at-change for its unit. That is, if a unit is modified, systemd will not run the modified version until reloaded.

• show-environment shows the environment variables of the system.

• list-units [PATTERN...] is self-explanatory ;p.

• is-active PATTERN... prints the status of the matched unit and exits successfully if it's active.