systemctl(1)

Show runtime status information about the whole system or about one or more units followed by most recent log data from the journal. If no positional arguments are specified, and no unit filter is given with --type=, --state=, or --failed, shows the status of the whole system. If combined with --all, follows that with the status of all units. If positional arguments are specified, each positional argument is treated as either a unit name to show, or a glob pattern to show units whose names match that pattern, or a PID to show the unit containing that PID. When --type=, --state=, or --failed are used, units are additionally filtered by the TYPE and ACTIVE state.

This function is intended to generate human-readable output. If you are looking for computer-parsable output, use show instead. By default, this function only shows 10 lines of output and ellipsizes lines to fit in the terminal window. This can be changed with --lines and --full, see above. In addition, journalctl --unit=NAME or journalctl --user-unit=NAME use a similar filter for messages and might be more convenient.

Note that this operation only displays runtime status, i.e. information about the current invocation of the unit (if it is running) or the most recent invocation (if it is not running anymore, and has not been released from memory). Information about earlier invocations, invocations from previous system boots, or prior invocations that have already been released from memory may be retrieved via journalctl --unit=.

systemd implicitly loads units as necessary, so just running the status will attempt to load a file. The command is thus not useful for determining if something was already loaded or not. The units may possibly also be quickly unloaded after the operation is completed if there's no reason to keep it in memory thereafter.

.PP Example 1. Example output from systemctl status

$ systemctl status bluetooth
● bluetooth.service - Bluetooth service


   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service; enabled; preset: enabled)


   Active: active (running) since Wed 2017-01-04 13:54:04 EST; 1 weeks 0 days ago


     Docs: man:bluetoothd(8)


 Main PID: 930 (bluetoothd)


   Status: "Running"


    Tasks: 1


   Memory: 648.0K


      CPU: 435ms


   CGroup: /system.slice/bluetooth.service


           └─930 /usr/lib/bluetooth/bluetoothd
Jan 12 10:46:45 example.com bluetoothd[8900]: Not enough free handles to register service
Jan 12 10:46:45 example.com bluetoothd[8900]: Current Time Service could not be registered
Jan 12 10:46:45 example.com bluetoothd[8900]: gatt-time-server: Input/output error (5)

The dot ("●") uses color on supported terminals to summarize the unit state at a glance. Along with its color, its shape varies according to its state: inactive or maintenance is a white circle ("○"), active is a green dot ("●"), deactivating is a white dot, failed or error is a red cross ("×"), and reloading or refreshing is a green clockwise circle arrow ("↻").

The "Loaded:" line in the output will show loaded if the unit has been loaded into memory. Other possible values for "Loaded:" include: error if there was a problem loading it, not-found if no unit file was found for this unit, bad-setting if an essential unit file setting could not be parsed and masked if the unit file has been masked. Along with showing the path to the unit file, this line will also show the enablement state. Enabled units are included in the dependency network between units, and thus are started at boot or via some other form of activation. See the full table of possible enablement states — including the definition of masked — in the documentation for the is-enabled command.

The "Active:" line shows active state. The value is usually active or inactive. Active could mean started, bound, plugged in, etc depending on the unit type. The unit could also be in process of changing states, reporting a state of activating or deactivating. A special failed state is entered when the service failed in some way, such as a crash, exiting with an error code or timing out. If the failed state is entered the cause will be logged for later reference.

.RE

.PP show [PATTERN...|JOB...]

systemctl mount-image foo.service /tmp/img.raw /var/lib/image root:ro,nosuid

systemctl mount-image --mkdir bar.service /tmp/img.raw /var/lib/baz/img

# systemctl start sshd

# systemctl start sshd.service

# systemctl isolate default

# systemctl isolate default.target

# systemctl status /dev/sda
# systemctl status /home

# systemctl status dev-sda.device
# systemctl status home.mount

# systemctl stop "sshd@*.service"

# systemctl enable foo.service

# systemctl link /path/to/foo.service

$ systemctl edit --drop-in=limits.conf --stdin some-service.service <<EOF
[Unit]
AllowedCPUs=7,11
EOF