SysVinit to Systemd Cheatsheet

This is a document to help system administrators who need to understand what commands in systemd replace their old workflow in SysVinit.

Note that the 'service' and 'chkconfig' commands will continue to work as expected in the systemd world, this guide is how to use the native systemctl calls that are being made by those commands.

Services

SystemVinit Command	Systemd Command	Notes
ls /etc/rc.d/init.d/	ls /lib/systemd/system/*.service /etc/systemd/system/*.service	Used to list the services that can be started or stopped
chkconfig frobozz	systemctl is-enabled frobozz.service	Used to check whether a service is configured to start or not in the current environment.
chkconfig frobozz --list	ls /etc/systemd/system/*.wants/frobozz.service	Used to list what levels this service is configured on or off
chkconfig frobozz --level 345 on	for runlevel in multi-user graphical ; do ln -s /lib/systemd/system/frobozz.service /etc/systemd/system/$runlevel.target.wants/ && systemctl daemon-reload	Turn the service on for the next reboot. Note: systemd doesn't have a separate "runlevel 4"
chkconfig frobozz --level 345 off	for runlevel in multi-user graphical ; do rm /etc/systemd/system/$runlevel.target.wants/frobozz.service && systemctl daemon-reload	Turn the service off for the next reboot. Note: systemd doesn't have a separate "runlevel 4"
service frobozz start	systemctl start frobozz.service (OR service frobozz start)	Used to start a service (not reboot persistent)
service frobozz stop	systemctl stop frobozz.service (OR service frobozz stop)	Used to stop a service (not reboot persistent)
service frobozz restart	systemctl restart frobozz.service (OR service frobozz restart)	Used to stop and then start a service
service frobozz reload	systemctl reload frobozz.service (OR service frobozz reload)	When supported, reloads the config file without interrupting pending operations.
service frobozz condrestart	systemctl reload-or-restart frobozz.service (OR systemctl condrestart frobozz.service OR service frobozz condrestart)	When supported, restarts if the service is already running.
service frobozz status	systemctl status frobozz.service	Tells whether a service is currently running.

Additional commands
In SysVinit, services can define arbitrary commands. Examples would be service iptables panic, or service httpd graceful. Native systemd services do not have this ability.

Any service that defines an additional command in this way would need to define some other, service-specific, way to accomplish this task when writing a native systemd service definition.

Check the package-specific release notes for any services that may have done this.

Runlevels

runlevels are used with telinit and on the kernel command line in SystemVinit. These traditional ways of switching runlevels still work with systemd, but additionally, the following can be used instead.

SystemVinit Runlevel	Systemd Target	Notes
0	runlevel0.target, poweroff.target	Halt the system.
1, s, single	runlevel1.target, rescue.target	Single user mode.
2, 4	runlevel2.target, runlevel4.target, multi-user.target	User-defined/Site-specific runlevels. By default, identical to 3.
3	runlevel3.target, multi-user.target	Multi-user, non-graphical. Users can usually login via multiple consoles or via the network.
5	runlevel5.target, graphical.target	Multi-user, graphical. Usually has all the services of runlevel 3 plus a graphical login.
6	runlevel6.target, reboot.target	Reboot
emergency	emergency.target	Emergency shell

Changing runlevels:

SystemVinit Command	Systemd Command	Notes
telinit 3	systemctl isolate multi-user.target (OR systemctl isolate runlevel3.target OR telinit 3)	Change to multi-user run level.
sed s/^id:.*:initdefault:/id:3:initdefault:/	ln -sf /lib/systemd/system/multi-user.target /etc/systemd/system/default.target	Set to use multi-user runlevel on next reboot.