You have a services window in the Windows operating system through which you can manage your entire services including viewing, starting, and stopping them. Similarly, you have a terminal in Linux (Debian) operating systems for doing the same.
In this article, I am going to focus on different ways of starting, stopping and restarting the services in Debian version 10.
How to list all services in Debian 10
If you want to view the entire services running in the Debian 10, you can run the following command.
ls /etc/init.d/
If you want to get a more detailed list of all services and processes running in your Debian operating system, execute the following command.
systemctl list-unit-files
You are required to run the above commands with root privileges otherwise you will have an error as shown in the following screenshot.
How to check the status of a particular service using init.d
There are several ways to check the status of a particular service whether it is running or not. One of such methods is by using init.d. You can execute the command with root privileges having following syntax,
/etc/init.d/{servicename} status
Let’s check the status of the networking service. The complete command should look like the following,
/etc/init.d/networking status
It is clearly visible from above that the networking interfaces are active.
How to check the status of a particular service using systemctl
One of the second methods of checking the status of a particular service is by using systemctl. Syntax of the command is as follows,
systemctl status {servicename}
We will again take the example of a networking service to check its status. For this, execute the following command with root privileges on Debian the terminal.
systemctl status networking
When results are returned, they clearly show that the networking service is running and interfaces are up.
How to stop, start and restart a particular service
There are two methods of stopping and starting a particular service. I will list here both of the methods.
Start and stop a service using init.d
Let me start by stopping the already running networking service to show you how to stop any service with the help of init.d. Execute the following command with root privileges,
/etc/init.d/networking stop
The complete syntax of the command should look like this,
/etc/init.d/{servicename} stop
In order to confirm the status of the networking service, let’s execute the already described command.
/etc/init.d/networking status
The above screenshot shows the networking service is not running and interfaces are inactive.
Once the networking service has been stopped, let us start it to show you the method of starting any service. A command should look like the following,
/etc/init.d/networking start
Therefore, the syntax of the command should be as follows.
/etc/init.d/{servicename} start
Let us confirm that the networking service has successfully run. Therefore, take a status.
/etc/init.d/networking status
We have successfully run the networking service as the above screenshot shows.
Start and stop a service using systemctl
Services can be started and stopped with the help of systemctl. Let us stop the already running networking service. Execute the following command with root privileges,
systemctl stop networking
The command won’t return any output on the screen. To confirm execute the following command,
systemctl status networking
The above screenshot clearly shows that the networking service has stopped and network interfaces are inactive.
Once the service has been started, let me start it to show you the method of starting any service. The syntax of the command is as follows,
systemctl start networking
Once the above command is executed successfully, it won’t show anything on the terminal. To make sure that the service has successfully run, check its status with the help of the already described command.
systemctl status networking
The output of the command shows that the networking service has successfully run and its interfaces are up.
Restart a service using init.d and systemctl
You can directly restart any service with the help of init.d and systemctl. The syntax of both commands should be as follows,
/etc/init.d/{servicename} restart
systemctl restart {servicename}
To restart the networking service, the above commands should look as follows.
/etc/init.d/networking restart systemctl restart networking
When these commands are executed successfully, they won’t return anything on the terminal. You can confirm from their status after looking for active and time stamp in the command output.
I hope you have enjoyed this article. If you have any problem or suggestion, please let me know by writing in the comment section.