systemd, ctl commands

Question

So I have been curious about one thing about systemd.

Lest say I wanted to update the time on my laptop. I use "timedatectl" command. But how did you know that the "prefix" for this command is "timedate"ctl? And not "timectl", or "datectl"?

I am guessing you can use systemctl command to list the units and targets in your Linux system? And I should find "timedatectl"?

So my point is where and how can I find the names of command when use ctl?

I hope I am making sense here.

Thanks a lot! Denny

You look at what executables the appropriate packages contain. — Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams, Feb 28 '18 at 22:33
A related question is https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/3362/ . — JdeBP, Feb 28 '18 at 22:34
Hi Ignacio, Can you please provide an example? Sorry, I am a Linux newbie. — Denny, Feb 28 '18 at 22:46

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 28 '18 at 23:52

2

You can use the apropos command to find commands if you aren't sure.

apropos search-string

Where search-string is along the lines of what you are looking for. Think of it as a way to grep for the commands.

answered Feb 28 '18 at 23:52

Nasir Riley

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 13 '20 at 08:14

To list manual pages whose title or description contains a word ending with ctl:

$ apropos 'ctl\b'
_sysctl (2)          - read/write system parameters
alsactl (1)          - advanced controls for ALSA soundcard driver
apachectl (8)        - Apache HTTP Server Control Interface
...

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 08 '23 at 14:53

1

You can use either of these two equivalent commands:

apropos your-command-pattern

Or

man -k your-command-pattern

edited Jan 08 '23 at 14:53

terdon

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answered Jan 08 '23 at 06:45

Pannag

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systemd, ctl commands

3 Answers3

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