Systemd commands
Systemd has a range of commands to interact with the systemd services and functions. Typically daemons will have a ’d’ in their name, such as systemd-networkd, while client tools end with ‘ctl’ (systemctl). Here is an overview of the available commands and their purpose.
Primary commands
Journalctl
Events are stored in a journal, similar to what syslog does. The biggest exception is the way log information is stored and how it is queried. As data is stored in a binary format, the journalctl command can filter out relevant information.
Systemctl
To control systemd units, such as services, the systemctl command is used.
Some functions include:
- Start and stop service or unit
- Show status of a unit
- Show dependencies
Looking for a quick overview how to use? Have a look at these cheat sheets:
Overview of systemd commands
| Command | Purpose |
|---|---|
| bootctl | Manage EFI firmware boot settings the boot loader |
| coredumpctl | List and process stored core dumps |
| hostnamectl | Shows hostname, system type, hardware architecture, OS and kernel version, and allows hostname and location change |
| importctl | Download, import, and export disk images via systemd-importd |
| journalctl | Show journal entries |
| localectl | Manage system locale and keyboard layout |
| loginctl | Controls the systemd login manager and can also be used to query information about users |
| machinectl | Introspect and control virtual machine and container registry registration manager |
| resolvectl | Query network name resolution from systemd-resolved, show DNS settings and resolver |
| run0 | Acts like sudo and uses the systemd-run multi-call binary |
| systemctl | Start, stop, monitor, and change units |
| systemd-ac-power | Report if system is connected to external power source (AC) |
| systemd-analyze | Analyze and debug system manager, from boot order details up to showing general information |
| systemd-ask-password | Ask the user a password, like encryption password of a disk |
| systemd-cat | Read information and put this into the systemd journal |
| systemd-cgls | Show Linux control group in a tree |
| systemd-cgtop | Monitor control group usage, similar to top for processes |
| systemd-confext | System extension images, which dynamically may extend an existing file path. With systemd-confext the focus is just on /etc directory. |
| systemd-creds | Show, encrypt, or decrypt credentials such as keys, certificates, user account information |
| systemd-cryptenroll | Enroll hardware security tokens and devices into LUKS volumes |
| systemd-cryptsetup | Provides access to encrypted block devices |
| systemd-delta | Show configuration files that are overridden |
| systemd-detect-virt | Determine if execution is done from within a virtual machine |
| systemd-dissect | Introspect and interact with file system OS disk images |
| systemd-escape | Helper utility to escape or unescape text strings for usage in systemd units |
| systemd-firstboot | Performs specific actions before or during the first boot of the system |
| systemd-gpt-auto-generator | Unit generator to automatically discover common paths like /, /home, etc., including partitions |
| systemd-hwdb | Manages binary hardware database, a key-value store related to udev |
| systemd-id128 | Generate and show UUIDs (id-128 identifiers) |
| systemd-inhibit | Provides a lock to prevent events like a system sleep or shutdown to stop execution of an important process |
| systemd-machine-id-setup | Initialize /etc/machine-id file, so a machine ID stored |
| systemd-mount | Create or start a mount or automount unit |
| systemd-notify | Notify service manager about daemon status changes |
| systemd-networkd | System service to manage network connectivity |
| systemd-nspawn | Run a command or OS in a light-weight container |
| systemd-path | Query system and user paths |
| systemd-repart | Automatically create and grow partitions |
| systemd-resolve | Interface to systemd-resolved to provide network name resolution for local applications |
| systemd-run | Run command within some types of unit files and active the related service |
| systemd-socket-active | Tool to test socket activation of daemons |
| systemd-stdio-bridge | Proxy between STDIN/STDOUT and a bus within D-Bus |
| systemd-sysext | Activates system extension images to dynamically extend existing file paths |
| systemd-sysusers | Allocation of system users and groups |
| systemd-tmpfiles | Deals with temporary files, such as its creation and deletion |
| systemd-tty-ask-password-agent | List or process queued systemd password requests |
| systemd-umount | Unmount utility for specific unit files |
| systemd-vpick | Implementation of vpick protocol for versioned files using Linux UAPI version format specification |
| systemd-vmspawn | Similar to systemd-nspawn but launches a full virtual machine instead |
Missing a particular command? Let it know!