During the booting up of the system, systemd activates default.target, which is generally a symbolic link in the /etc/systemd/system/ directory to either graphical.target or multi-user.target. It is equivalent to the default runlevel, which the system administrator used to set in the /etc/inittab file.
The following table lists the systemctl commands that are used to manage default targets along with their description:
|
Command |
Description |
|
# systemctl get-default |
Views the existing default target |
|
# systemctl set-default graphical.target |
Sets the default target to graphical.target (graphical shell) |
|
# systemctl set-default multi-user.target |
Sets the default target to multi-user.target (text-based shell) |
An example to change the default target by using the systemctl command is shown in the following screenshot:
