There are services that can be enabled/disabled using the GUI (like the startup
application) or the terminal.
For the Terminal you have several options. First, open a terminal (Type "terminal" in the dash, for example, and open it). Then:
Temporary enabling/disabling services
To stop and start services temporarily (Does not enable / disable them for future boots), you can type service SERVICE_NAME [action]
. For example:
sudo service apache2 stop
(Will STOP the Apache service until Reboot or until you start it again).
sudo service apache2 start
(Will START the Apache service assuming it was stopped before.).
service apache2 status
(Will tell you the STATUS of the service, if it is either enabled/running of disabled/NOT running.).
sudo service apache2 restart
(Will RESTART the service. This is most commonly used when you have changed, a config file. In this case, if you changed either a PHP configuration or an Apache configuration. Restart will save you from having to stop/start with 2 command lines)
service apache2
(In this case, since you did not mention the ACTION to execute for the service, it will show you all options available for that specific service.) This aspect varies depending on the service, for example, with MySQL it would only mention that it is missing a parameter. For other services like networking service it would mention the small list of all options available.
SYSTEMD
Starting with Ubuntu 15.04, Upstart will be deprecated in favor of Systemd. With Systemd to manage the services we can do the following (through the systemctl action SERVICE
pattern):
systemctl start SERVICE
- Use it to start a service. Does not persist after reboot
systemctl stop SERVICE
- Use it to stop a service. Does not persist after reboot
systemctl restart SERVICE
- Use it to restart a service
systemctl reload SERVICE
- If the service supports it, it will reload the config files related to it without interrupting any process that is using the service.
systemctl status SERVICE
- Shows the status of a service. Tells whether a service is currently running.
systemctl enable SERVICE
- Turns the service on, on the next reboot or on the next start event. It persists after reboot.
systemctl disable SERVICE
- Turns the service off on the next reboot or on the next stop event. It persists after reboot.
systemctl is-enabled SERVICE
- Check if a service is currently configured to start or not on the next reboot.
systemctl is-active SERVICE
- Check if a service is currently active.
systemctl show SERVICE
- Show all the information about the service.
sudo systemctl mask SERVICE
- Completely disable a service by linking it to /dev/null
; you cannot start the service manually or enable the service.
sudo systemctl unmask SERVICE
- Removes the link to /dev/null
and restores the ability to enable and or manually start the service.
UPSTART (Deprecated Since 15.04)
If we want to use the official Upstart way (Note that, for the moment, not all services have been converted to Upstart), we could use the following commands:
status SERVICE
- This will tell us if a converted service is running or not. Note that this is deprecated in favor of start
, stop
, status
& restart
. It will also tell us if a service has not yet been converted to upstart:
A converted service would typically output the current status (Starting, Running, Stopping...) and process ID. A non converted service would give an error about an unknown job.
Some shortcuts may only work with the service
command above but not with the commands below unless they are 100% converted to upstart services:
Enabling / Disabling a service
To toggle a service from starting or stopping permanently you would need to:
echo manual | sudo tee /etc/init/SERVICE.override
where the stanza manual
will stop Upstart from automatically loading the service on next boot. Any service with the .override
ending will take precedence over the original service file. You will only be able to start the service manually afterwards. If you do not want this then simply delete the .override
.
For example:
echo manual | sudo tee /etc/init/mysql.override
Will put the MySQL service into manual
mode. If you do not want this, afterwards you can simply do
sudo rm /etc/init/mysql.override
and Reboot for the service to start automatically again. Of course to enable a service, the most common way is by installing it. If you install Apache, Nginx, MySQL or others, they automatically start upon finishing installation and will start every time the computer boots. Disabling, as mentioned above, will make use of the service manual
.
Regarding services that are defined in both SysV and upstart, generally if you restart it through SysV you'll see something like this:
al@al-mythtv:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/mysql restart
[sudo] password for al:
Rather than invoking init scripts through /etc/init.d, use the service(8)
utility, e.g. service mysql restart
Since the script you are attempting to invoke has been converted to an
Upstart job, you may also use the stop(8) and then start(8) utilities,
e.g. stop mysql ; start mysql. The restart(8) utility is also available.
mysql stop/waiting
mysql start/running, process 29846
What I take this to mean is that Upstart is preferred for these services, and the SysV implementation is just a wrapper.
Also, I think you have the meaning of the directories backwards. /etc/init is upstart configuration, /etc/init.d is the SysV compatibility, but it is just symlinks to upstart for these type of services.
Best Answer
It depends largely on the service. The new and preferred way to stop start and restart services is through
/etc/init.d
. So, for example, to stop or start the Apache Webserver, you can run/etc/init.d/apache2 stop
/etc/init.d/apache2 start
The same is true of many other services, but probably not all. You can use the utility
sysv-rc-conf
to see which services you have that use aninit.d
script and manage them that way as well. Run it withsudo sysv-rc-conf
.If you're looking for a GUI application, try Boot up Manager. Install with
apt-get install bum
and run from the UI or from a terminal with
sudo bum
Usage and documentation can be found here.