Managing Services with systemctl

In this lesson, you will learn how to manage system services in Linux using systemctl, a command-line utility for controlling the systemd system and service manager. Our focus will be on managing NGINX, a popular web server and reverse proxy service, using systemd.

Objectives

By the end of this lesson, you will understand how to:

• Start, stop, and restart the NGINX service.
• Enable and disable NGINX to start on boot.
• Check the status of NGINX.
• Reload NGINX configurations.

Starting, Stopping, and Restarting NGINX

Starting NGINX

To start the NGINX service immediately:

Stopping NGINX

To stop the NGINX service:

Restarting NGINX

To restart the NGINX service (useful for reloading it with the latest configuration):

Enabling and Disabling NGINX

Enabling NGINX

To enable NGINX to start automatically at boot:

Disabling NGINX

To prevent NGINX from starting automatically at boot:

Checking the Status of NGINX

To check the status of NGINX, including whether it is active, enabled, and its recent logs:

Reloading NGINX Configurations

If you've made configuration changes to NGINX and you don't want to restart the service completely, you can reload the configuration:

Managing All Services

To list all services that systemd knows about, whether active or not:

Best Practices

• Always check the status of NGINX after starting, stopping, or restarting to ensure it's in the desired state.
• When enabling or disabling services like NGINX, consider the impact on the system's pe…