November 2024
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930  

Categories

November 2024
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930  

CentOS / RHEL 7 : How to change runlevels (targets) with systemd

Systemd has replaced sysVinit as the default service manager in RHEL 7. Some of the sysVinit commands have been symlinked to their RHEL 7 counterparts, however this will eventually be deprecated in favor of the standard systemd commands in the future.

SysVinit V/s systemd runlevels

Here is a comparison between SysVinit runlevels V/s systemd targets.

SYSVINIT RUNLEVEL SYSTEMD TARGET FUNCTION
0 runlevel0.target, poweroff.target System halt/shutdown
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 mode, text console only
5 runlevel5.target, graphical.target Multi-user, graphical mode
6 runlevel6.target, reboot.target Reboot
emergency emergency.target Emergency mode
Changing runlevels with systemd

The runlevel target can be changed by using the systemctl isolate command :

# systemctl isolate multi-user.target
To view what targets are available you can issue the list-units option with the type target

# systemctl list-units –type=target
Run level 3 is emulated by multi-user.target. This is done by symbolic link and can be used interchangeably

# systemctl isolate multi-user.target
# systemctl isolate runlevel3.target
# ls -l /usr/lib/systemd/system/runlevel3.target
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Oct 18 11:41 /usr/lib/systemd/system/runlevel3.target -> multi-user.target
Run level 5 is emulated by graphical.target. This is also done by symbolic link and can be used interchangeably

# systemctl isolate graphical.target
# systemctl isolate runlevel5.target
# ls -l /usr/lib/systemd/system/runlevel5.target
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 Oct 18 11:41 /usr/lib/systemd/system/runlevel5.target -> graphical.target
Changing the default runlevel

The default runlevel can be changed by using the set-default option.

# systemctl set-default multi-user.target
To get the currently set default, you can use the get-default option.

# systemctl get-default
The default runlevel in systemd can also be set using the below method (not recommended though).

# ln -sf /lib/systemd/system/[desired].target /etc/systemd/system/default.target
The default target can also be set in the kernel line during boot by adding the following option :

systemd.unit=multi-user.target

Leave a Reply

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>