Question

systemctl command not found

Posted November 4, 2014 133.7k views

Our project manager set up a droplet. When I set up a service according to https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-deploy-node-js-applications-using-systemd-and-nginx and try to run it with sudo systemctl start my-service there is no systemctl command anywhere (also not in /sbin or /usr/sbin). Is that tutorial up-to-date? Is there a different way to create a service?

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asb November 4, 2014

That tutorial targets Linux distributions that use the systemd init system. That is also what provides the systemctl command. What Linux distribution are you working with? Ubuntu will be moving to systemd in a future release, but currently does not use it. Fedora, CentOS 7, and CoreOS on the other hand all should come with that command available by default.

If you are using Ubuntu, you can accomplish something similar using Upstart. For instance, the systemd service file from that tutorial can be written as an Upstart script like so:

description "Upstart script to launch a node app"

start on (local-filesystems and net-device-up IFACE=eth0)
stop on runlevel [!12345]

respawn

setuid srv-node-sample
setgid srv-node-sample
env NODE_ENV=production
chdir  /home/srv-node-sample/

exec /usr/bin/node index.js

For all the details on how to use Upstart, check out:

The Upstart Event System: What It Is And How To Use It
by Yasin Soliman
Use Upstart for modern, full-coverage initialization. This tutorial explains the concepts behind initialization and provides two practical examples of initialization jobs with Upstart.
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Hexacker March 10, 2018

Hello there,

If you want to stop/start the services then use the service command.

service <service-name> status/start/stop

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  • bocah August 11, 2019

    i use this command but still have error:
    service httpd status
    Redirecting to /bin/systemctl status httpd.service
    /sbin/service: line 87: /bin/systemctl: No such file or directory

    How to fix this error, i use centos 7

    Regards

    Reply Report
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