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service – Utilities for controlling system services

The service command is a utility for controlling system services on a Linux system. It allows you to start, stop, restart, and check the status of system services. The service command is commonly used on Linux distributions that use the SysVinit system, such as CentOS, Debian, and Ubuntu.

Overview

To use the service command, you need to specify the name of the service you want to control and the action you want to perform. The syntax for using the service command is as follows:

service [options] <service> <action>

Here, <service> is the name of the service you want to control, and <action> is the action you want to perform on the service. The available actions are:

  • start: Start the service.
  • stop: Stop the service.
  • restart: Restart the service.
  • status: Check the status of the service.
  • reload: Reload the configuration of the service.
  • force-reload: Force a reload of the configuration of the service.

For example, to start the Apache web server service on a CentOS system, you would use the following command:

service httpd start

To check the status of the Apache web server service, you would use the following command:

service httpd status

Options

The following options are available for the service command:

Option Description
-h, --help Display help information.
-V, --version Display version information.
-s, --status-all Check the status of all services.
-k, --key Send a signal to the service.
-a, --all Perform the action on all services.
-p, --pidfile Specify the PID file for the service.
-n, --dry-run Print the actions that would be taken without actually performing them.

Troubleshooting tips

If you encounter issues when using the service command, here are some troubleshooting tips:

  • Make sure you have the correct name of the service you want to control.
  • Check the syntax of the command you are using.
  • Make sure you have the necessary permissions to control the service.
  • Check the log files for the service to see if there are any error messages.

Notes

  • The service command is being replaced by the systemctl command on Linux distributions that use the systemd system.
  • The service command may not work for all services on your system. Some services may have their own control scripts or use a different system for managing services.

Related commands