Please refer to: https://askubuntu.com/questions/882527/tor-process-will-not-start-automatically-on-ubuntu-16-04/903341 When I looked at tor.service I find it's nothing more than a dummy file that only returns true if the tor.service is running and not the actual tor program itself: ---- # This service is actually a systemd target, # but we are using a service since targets cannot be reloaded. [Unit] Description=Anonymizing overlay network for TCP (multi-instance-master) [Service] Type=oneshot RemainAfterExit=yes ExecStart=/bin/true ExecReload=/bin/true ---- So regardless if the TOR process is actually running or not, tor.service always returns TRUE. This is Invalid. and As a result running: sudo systemctl start|stop tor does nothing as you can see here: ● tor.service - Anonymizing overlay network for TCP (multi-instance-master) ** Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/tor.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)** Active: active (exited) since Sun 2017-12-10 14:24:42 EST; 9min ago Main PID: 17641 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) CGroup: /system.slice/tor.service So for the moment the temporary fix is: Removing or renaming offending file /lib/systemd/system/tor.service and reloading the scripts w/ systemctl daemon-reload. because the actual and correct script to start tor is in /etc/init.d/tor After this modifcation the resulting output of sudo systemctl status tor: ● tor.service - LSB: Starts The Onion Router daemon processes ** Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/tor; bad; vendor preset: enabled)** Active: active (exited) since Sun 2017-12-10 14:24:42 EST; 26min ago Docs: !man:systemd-sysv-generator(8) Main PID: 17641 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) CGroup: /system.slice/tor.service I believe the tor script in /etc/init.d/tor is incorrectly attempting to start/stop tor through tor.service as well. Please correct this as soon as possible thank you ! **Trac**: **Username**: d3m0nkingx