"systemctl" can run a "main" foreground process as follows: systemctl init apache2 --- Service templates are not fully supported. For example, the default "postfix" instance on Debian is "postfix@-.service" and the following workaround is required to start it by "systemctl" command: ln -sv /lib/systemd/system/postfix@.service /etc/systemd/system/postfix@-.service See the following upstream bug report for details: https://github.com/gdraheim/docker-systemctl-replacement/issues/62