How do I restart a service in the terminal

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Level 1

17 points

How do I restart a service in the terminal

I saw a post that says I can, to start a service go

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/***.plist

so i start out with trying to print all the services in the system domain (I hope that's the right domain here) so i can find the one I want.

sudo launchctl print /System

And at that point I get lost, because the man page is just a lot of terminology to take in when all I want to do is understand what counts as a service and how to send "messages" to it. I wonder if there is a reference for people who have never ever installed xcode to help us?

Posted on Jun 10, 2022 3:13 AM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

123,356 points

Jun 10, 2022 4:18 AM in response to conradbraam

Whether you can send a message to them is dependent on what it is. You may be able to communicate with a daemon, but you wouldn’t do so with launchctl. That is for managing and some amount of inspection of the launch daemon items. Your syntax is wrong; use:

launchctl print system

If you know the name of the daemon, you may find information using the manual page in Terminal.

What service do you wish to send a message to, and what do you want to send.

Also, the load subcommand can still be used, but may not work going forward.

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

123,356 points

Jun 10, 2022 4:30 AM in response to conradbraam

Here's a little more information than provided by the man page:

macOS launchctl commands – rakhesh.com

Kickstarting and tearing down with launchctl - The Eclectic Light Company

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Answer 3

conradbraam Author

Level 1

17 points

Jun 10, 2022 6:11 AM in response to Barney-15E

Ah, yeah this definitely got me moving again. I'm your typical Windows users, so I'm used to the plethora of simple commandline shells there, and the unix landscape is super daunting. Those links together with the explainer helped me find the service. Machine is without a display most of the time, so doing things over ssh has often been the preference for little tasks.

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How do I restart a service in the terminal

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