Cannot start webserver for the Kodi remote control (CE 19.1)

[risa2000]

Currently running CE 19.1 on GTKing (rev. A). For some reason I am not able to start the webserver for remote control.
There is a setting in guisettings.xml

    --><setting id="services.webserver" default="true">false</setting>
    <setting id="services.webserverport" default="true">8080</setting>
    <setting id="services.webserverauthentication" default="true">true</setting>
    <setting id="services.webserverusername" default="true">kodiuser</setting>
    <setting id="services.webserverpassword">kodipass</setting>
    <setting id="services.webserverssl" default="true">false</setting>

I have verified on LibreElec Kodi and even on Kodi on Windows that this a valid configuration to run the webserver except the first line which should read:

    <setting id="services.webserver">true</setting>

But even if I set the config file right and (re)start Kodi it would not start the webserver and changes the config line back to what is in the first snippet above.

Is there any (other) specific configuration on CE which I need to attend to in order to start the webserver?

[boot2k3]

You should enable it via Settings->Services->Control

[risa2000]

The point was I did not have an access to the box, and could only ssh into it.
But I found out what was the problem. I did not stop Kodi when changing the config file, so it got overwritten when I restarted Kodi.