Can't start service manually after `sudo systemctl disable`

Question

I have a service that starts at boot, but I want to control it manually. Everywhere I go it says sudo systemctl disable service should do what I need, but it seems to remove the service entirely so I can't start it manually afterwards:

$ sudo systemctl disable service
Removed /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/service.service.
Removed /etc/systemd/system/service.service.

$ sudo systemctl start service
Failed to start service.service: Unit service.service not found

I want to remove it from autostart but still be able to start it when I want. What am I missing?

---

What is the output of systemctl cat

Before disabling it:

# /etc/systemd/system/service.service
[Unit]
Description=Service Name

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/service/service <username>
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Answer 1

This looks like service.service was just an alias for the actual service name, and was represented by a symbolic link in /etc/systemd/system/service.service. Such links get removed when a service is disabled.

Try grep "Alias=service.service" /etc/systemd/system/*. If it produces a hit, the name of the file will be the actual service name, and you will be able to use that name to start, stop and re-enable the service.