Skip to main content

Service Management Documentation

Comprehensive guide to checking, monitoring, and managing systemd services on CentOS systems using systemctl and journalctl.

Common Commands​

Status Checking​

Check service status:

sudo systemctl status nginx

Check if service is running:

sudo systemctl is-active nginx

Check if service auto-starts on boot:

sudo systemctl is-enabled nginx

Control Operations​

Start service:

sudo systemctl start nginx

Stop service:

sudo systemctl stop nginx

Restart service:

sudo systemctl restart nginx

Reload configuration without restarting:

sudo systemctl reload nginx

Enable/Disable​

Enable service to auto-start on boot:

sudo systemctl enable nginx

Disable service auto-start:

sudo systemctl disable nginx

Prevent service from being started:

sudo systemctl mask nginx

Allow service to be started:

sudo systemctl unmask nginx

Logging​

Follow service logs in real-time:

sudo journalctl -u nginx -f

Show last 50 lines of logs:

sudo journalctl -u nginx -n 50

Show error messages only:

sudo journalctl -u nginx -p err