Managing Services on Linux With systemctl

Most modern Linux distributions use systemd to manage background services like web servers, databases and other applications running on your Cloud Server.

Checking a service's status

sudo systemctl status servicename — for example, sudo systemctl status nginx

Starting, stopping and restarting a service

• sudo systemctl start servicename
• sudo systemctl stop servicename
• sudo systemctl restart servicename — stops and starts it again, useful after a configuration change

Enabling a service to start automatically on boot

sudo systemctl enable servicename

To stop it from starting automatically: sudo systemctl disable servicename

Viewing a service's logs

sudo journalctl -u servicename shows the log output for a specific service, useful for troubleshooting why it won't start.