Managing System Services with systemd
Control the long-running programs that power a Linux server using systemd: start, stop, enable, and inspect services, read their logs with journalctl, and understand how units fit into process management.
Services vs Ordinary Processes
You have managed individual processes and scheduled tasks. But the programs that define a server — web servers, databases, SSH — run as services: background daemons that should start at boot and restart on failure.
On modern Linux, services are managed by systemd, the system and service manager.
What systemd Manages
systemd organizes everything into units. The most common type is the .service unit, which describes how to run a daemon.
The systemctl command is your main interface to inspect and control these units.
systemctl --versionAll lessons in this course
- Managing Users and Groups
- Monitoring System Processes
- Scheduled Tasks with Cron
- Managing System Services with systemd