Process and Service Management with systemd in Ubuntu Linux

Table of Contents

1. Challenge

   Monitor and Control Running Linux Processes

   To start things off, you will inspect the Linux process table using tools like ps, top, and htop to identify the processes consuming the most resources. You will practice sending signals with kill and pkill, and compare exact-name signaling with killall against pattern-based signaling with pkill. You will adjust CPU scheduling priority using nice and renice, and manage foreground and background jobs in the shell with &, jobs, fg, and bg.

2. Challenge

   Manage an Existing Service with systemd and systemctl

   Next, you will manage an existing nginx service using systemd and systemctl. You will check the service status, review recent logs with journalctl, and perform common service actions such as starting, stopping, restarting, reloading, enabling, and disabling the service. You will also explore loaded units, failed units, the current default target, and the system boot sequence using tools like systemd-analyze and systemctl list-dependencies.

3. Challenge

   Create and Deploy a Custom systemd Unit File

   To finish things off, you will create and deploy a custom .service unit file for inventory-api. You will define the required [Unit], [Service], and [Install] sections, reload systemd, enable and start the service, and verify that it runs successfully. You will also test auto-recovery by stopping the process, confirm that systemd restarts it, create a safe override with systemctl edit, and inspect boot performance with systemd-analyze blame and systemd-analyze critical-chain.