Question: I wanted to disable `systemd` unwanted attempts to automatically start `wpa_supplicant`. I thougth I could simply run a

```
sudo systemctl disable wpa_supplicant.service --global

```

and I would not be seeing a wpa\_supplicant in `ps -ef` output anymore. Anyway this did not work. 
How can I make it work?

My problem at hand might be best described by the output of

```
$>systemctl status wpa_supplicant*
● wpa_supplicant.service - WPA supplicant
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/wpa_supplicant.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Sun 2016-08-28 20:57:37 CEST; 14min ago

```

where as you can see the `disabled` service is anyway loaded and active, thanks to systemd completely helping me do the simpletest thing ;)

**Update**  

I seem to have had some luck by brutely removing these files:

```
wpa_supplicant-nl80211@.service
wpa_supplicant.service
wpa_supplicant@.service
wpa_supplicant-wired@.service

```

from `/usr/lib/systemd/system` folder. Guess what? After restart wpa is finally not started by `systemd` anymore. It strikes me though there must have been a more *peaceful* / *conciliatory* way to get `systemd` to have the service not being started.

Answer: 
The `sudo systemctl disable wpa_supplicant` + `sudo systemctl stop wpa_supplicant` will ONLY *temporarily disable* `wpa_supplicant` service until the network manager *restarts* and/or the system *reboots*.

So, to **correctly** and/or **completely** disable the `wpa_supplicant` service from running again in the future even after the network manager *restarts* and/or the system *reboots* is to **mask** the service, i.e.

```
systemctl mask wpa_supplicant.service

```

etc., as pointed out in this [article](https://forums.centos.org/viewtopic.php?t=51125#p250865). This will create a symbolic file

```
/etc/systemd/system/wpa_supplicant.service → /dev/null

```

I hope this helps.
I tried following BrettB's suggestion, but it had no effect on my system. (Ubuntu 18.04.)

However, the following did work:

```
sudo systemctl disable wpa_supplicant

```