Manage

Tool Name: services/manage

Control systemd services (start, stop, restart, enable, disable). To get detailed service properties and state, read the service://{name}/status resource. To view service logs, use the logs/journal-control tool. To list all services, use the services/list tool.

Example

Every example below shows the equivalent linuxctl command and the raw MCP JSON-RPC call it resolves to. The raw call always follows the same two-step pattern (see MCP API overview for the full explanation): open an SSE stream to get a one-time POST endpoint, then POST the JSON-RPC request there - the result streams back on the SSE connection.

linuxctl

linuxctl restart system services nginx.service --privileged true

Output (not executed here - hypothetical, matches the tool's source code):

Job 482 completed with status: done

curl (raw MCP JSON-RPC)

# 1. Open the SSE stream (in the background) and capture the one-time POST endpoint
curl -N -s --cacert mcpd.crt -H "Authorization: Bearer $MCP_TOKEN" https://localhost:9091/sse &
# server sends: event: endpoint / data: /message?session_id=...

# 2. POST the tools/call request to that endpoint
curl -s --cacert mcpd.crt -X POST "https://localhost:9091/message?session_id=<from step 1>" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $MCP_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc": "2.0", "id": "1", "method": "tools/call", "params": {"name": "services/manage", "arguments": {"service": "nginx.service", "action": "restart", "privileged": true}}}'

# 3. The result arrives on the SSE stream opened in step 1

Response (not executed here - hypothetical, matches the tool's source code):

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": "1",
  "result": {
    "content": [
      {
        "type": "text",
        "text": "Job 482 completed with status: done"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Example​

Example