Cheatsheet Pages / systemd Cheatsheet
How to start or stop a systemd service right now — systemctl start / stop
You need a service up — or down — immediately, just for now.
Most management commands need sudo, and systemctl only works on a system actually booted with systemd — inside containers it fails with “System has not been booted with systemd as init system”. Every command was checked against systemd 255, and the example units pass systemd-analyze verify.
sudo systemctl start nginx # start it (and pull in its dependencies)
sudo systemctl stop nginx # stop it — nothing about boot behaviour changes