diff --git a/gate/test_evacuate.sh b/gate/test_evacuate.sh
index 3ef1caeabd..0b0d9135a6 100755
--- a/gate/test_evacuate.sh
+++ b/gate/test_evacuate.sh
@@ -64,6 +64,7 @@ openstack --os-compute-api-version 2.11 compute service set --down ${subnode} no
 
 echo "Stopping libvirt on the localhost before evacuating to trigger failure"
 sudo systemctl stop libvirt-bin
+sudo systemctl stop libvirtd
 
 # Now force the evacuation to *this* host; we have to force to bypass the
 # scheduler since we killed libvirtd which will trigger the libvirt compute
@@ -98,6 +99,7 @@ evacuate_and_wait_for_error evacuate-bfv-test
 
 echo "Now restart libvirt and perform a successful evacuation"
 sudo systemctl start libvirt-bin
+sudo systemctl start libvirtd
 sleep 10
 
 # Wait for the compute service to be enabled.