How to start, stop, restart, or enable a service with systemctl in Linux

Control a systemd service and set whether it starts at boot. Run as root or with sudo. Works on systemd distros (RHEL / Oracle Linux 7+, Ubuntu 16.04+).

Stopping or restarting a service drops its current connections and in-flight work. Restart databases and shared services in a maintenance window. enable / disable only change boot behaviour, not the running state.

# Start / stop / restart
sudo systemctl start <service>
sudo systemctl stop <service>
sudo systemctl restart <service>

# Reload config without a full restart (if supported)
sudo systemctl reload <service>

# Enable / disable at boot
sudo systemctl enable <service>
sudo systemctl disable <service>

# Enable and start in one step
sudo systemctl enable --now <service>

# Verify
systemctl status <service>