As a Linux administrator, one task you will most certainly be required to know is the controlling of services via the command line. Because many of the servers you will work with will be headless, the services contained within won’t have a GUI app to help you out. So when the likes of Apache, NGINX, MySQL, and Docker need to be started, restarted, or stopped, you’re going to need to have this skill in your back pocket.

As with many Linux tasks, there’s more than one way to take care of these services. Some services have their own control commands, while others depend upon the likes of systemctrl.

Thing is, you have to consider what init system your distribution uses. For those distributions that work with systemd (which is a vast majority), the primary control command is systemctl. With non-systemd distributions, the control command is service. And then, you have to consider that some applications might have their own control command.

This article from TechRepublic Premium takes a look at some of the ways you can control the start, stop, and restarting of services with the Linux operating system.