CertGrid CertGrid
Hands-on Lab·Red Hat Certified System Administrator

systemd Targets and Boot Selection

Two objectives: booting into a target manually, and configuring the default. Both are one command each. The part worth the guide is that set-default is a symlink - the same mechanism as enabling a service - and that isolate will disconnect you from a remote machine whatever target you give it.

Operating Running Systems Guide 23 of 67 Intermediate

Targets replaced SysV runlevels. runlevel still reports a number and telinit 3 still works, both through compatibility shims: multi-user.target is runlevel 3 and graphical.target is runlevel 5. The modern names are what the exam uses.

Every command on this page runs on RHCSA-A01.
Server NameIP AddressOSRolesCPURAMHDD
RHCSA-A01192.168.0.31RHEL 10.0Practice node (graded) - spare /dev/sda2 Core4 GB50 GB + 15 GB

This guide includes

Use this for two objectives at once - booting into a target, and setting the default. This matters because switching target at runtime over ssh can take your own session down with it.

Before you start

  1. What a target actually is

  2. The four that matter

  3. Setting the default

  4. Switching at runtime, and why not over ssh

Official sources