init system rosetta stone

The following table works as a Rosetta Stone to manage services depending on the init system¹ present in your distribution.

Substitute $service for the name of the service you want to manipulate.

	SysV init²	runit	systemd
List available services	`ls /etc/init.d/`	`ls /etc/sv`	`systemctl list-unit-files`
List running services	`service --status-all`	`ls /var/service`	`systemctl list-units`
Start service	`service $service start`³	`sv up $service`	`systemctl start $service`
Stop service	`service $service stop`³	`sv down $service`	`systemctl stop $service`
Restart service	`service $service restart`³	`sv restart $service`	`systemctl restart $service`
Get status of service	`service $service status`³	`sv status $service`	`systemctl status $service`
Enable service	`update-rc.d $service defaults`⁴	`ln -s /etc/sv/$service /var/service`	`systemctl enable $service`
Disable service	`update-rc.d $service remove`⁴	`rm /var/service/$service`	`systemctl disable $service`

Please consider using a GNU/Linux distribution that does not use systemd, like Devuan or Void Linux. Read why: init freedom.

There are a lot of other init systems, but here are the ones I've used. ↩
OpenRC builds upon SysV init, so what works for SysV init almost always works for OpenRC. Alpine Linux has a quick-start guide for OpenRC, here. ↩
Or manually, with: /etc/init.d/$service {start|stop|restart|status}. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
If you don't have update-rc.d you have to manually add/remove the symlinks to the service, search the internet for a deeper explanation. ↩ ↩²

dreamtigers / init-rosetta-stone