Tutorial

What is systemd?

Published on December 22, 2020
What is systemd?

Many Linux distributions use systemd to manage system settings and services. systemd organizes tasks into components called units, and groups of units into targets, that can be used to create dependencies on other system services and resources.

systemd can start units and targets automatically at boot time, or when requested by a user or another systemd target when a server is already running.

The systemctl command is used to interact with processes that are controlled by systemd. It can examine the status of units and targets, as well as start, stop, and reconfigure them.

To learn more about managing services with systemd and defining and using systemd unit files, visit:

Finally, to learn how to interact with systemd logs using the journalctl command, visit this tutorial, How To Use Journalctl to View and Manipulate Systemd Logs, which explains how systemd collects logs from units and displays them in a centralized location and unified format.

Thanks for learning with the DigitalOcean Community. Check out our offerings for compute, storage, networking, and managed databases.

Learn more about our products

About the authors

Still looking for an answer?

Ask a questionSearch for more help

Was this helpful?
 
Leave a comment


This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.

You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!

Try DigitalOcean for free

Click below to sign up and get $200 of credit to try our products over 60 days!

Sign up

Join the Tech Talk
Success! Thank you! Please check your email for further details.

Please complete your information!

Become a contributor for community

Get paid to write technical tutorials and select a tech-focused charity to receive a matching donation.

DigitalOcean Documentation

Full documentation for every DigitalOcean product.

Resources for startups and SMBs

The Wave has everything you need to know about building a business, from raising funding to marketing your product.

Get our newsletter

Stay up to date by signing up for DigitalOcean’s Infrastructure as a Newsletter.

New accounts only. By submitting your email you agree to our Privacy Policy

The developer cloud

Scale up as you grow — whether you're running one virtual machine or ten thousand.

Get started for free

Sign up and get $200 in credit for your first 60 days with DigitalOcean.*

*This promotional offer applies to new accounts only.