Tim Cooke

Remove a Linux service on Ubuntu

7th August 2020

I have an application running as a service on an Ubuntu Linux machine that I no longer need so want to stop it and remove is as a service to make sure it doesn't get started automatically on system start up.

I'll test this out using the service I previously created in Add a Linux Service on Ubuntu. First the service needs to be stopped, the systemd script deleted, and the service registration removed.

$ sudo service hello stop
$ sudo rm /lib/systemd/system/hello.service
$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
$ sudo systemctl reset-failed

Now check that the service no longer exists.

$ service hello status
Unit hello.service could not be found.

Done.