- How to check if a service that I don’t know the name of is running on Ubuntu
- 14 Answers 14
- How to Check Services Running in Linux
- Method 1: How to Check Services Running in Linux Using “systemctl” Utility?
- Method 2: How to Check Services Running on Linux Using “service” Command?
- Conclusion
- How to Use systemctl status Command to Check Service Status
- Using the systemctl status command
- Understanding the output of the systemctl status command
- Common options for systemctl status command
- Examples of using systemctl status command
- Conclusion
How to check if a service that I don’t know the name of is running on Ubuntu
I do not know the service’s name, but would like to stop the service by checking its status. For example, if I want to check if the PostgreSQL service is running or not, but I don’t know the service’s name, then how could I check its status? I know the command to check the status if the service name is known.
So how do you know it is the correct service if you don’t know it’s name? I can add plenty of init scripts to /etc/init.d/ with names containing keyword postgres (although this would be senseless!) and how can you know it’s the service you would like to stop? Plz add some explanation for your context
@Stefan as I am new to linux commands I would like to know if I do not know correct service name but partially using part of service name or like name can I find the same
You may use the service lists or ps -ef and parse the outputs. Anyhow I don’t think this is a good idea stopping services which you think are the ones to stop but not sure. Therefore you should make a list with the real service names running on the machine that you would like to stop. If you consider to only stop «standard» services like postgres, mysql, http you can find out the service names really easy.
14 Answers 14
I don’t have an Ubuntu box, but on Red Hat Linux you can see all running services by running the following command:
On the list the + indicates the service is running, — indicates service is not running, ? indicates the service state cannot be determined.
Thanks. The documentation doesn’t say what the symbols next to each service mean. I’d guess that «+» means it’s running and «-» means it isn’t. then there’s the «?» next to many. + means running?
For Ubuntu (checked with 12.04)
You can get list of all services and select by color one of them with ‘grep’:
sudo service --status-all | grep postgres
Or you may use another way if you know correct name of service:
sudo service postgresql status
sudo service x status reports Active: inactive (dead) here for a running service, Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid)
Maybe what you want is the ps command;
will show you all processes running. Then if you have an idea of what you’re looking for use grep to filter;
There is a simple way to verify if a service is running
systemctl status service_name
systemctl status postgresql
If you run the following command you will get a list of services:
To get a list of upstart jobs run this command:
You can use the below command to check the list of all services.
To check your own service:
the best way is using of nmap tool in terminal. nmap is an useful tool that analyse an up system, using it’s IP Address , then show all actived network services .
open terminal and use of this example :
~$ nmap 192.168.1.3/24 Starting Nmap 5.21 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2016-05-16 22:49 IRDT Nmap scan report for 192.168.1.3 Host is up (0.00020s latency). Not shown: 994 closed ports PORT STATE SERVICE 22/tcp open ssh 23/tcp open telnet 139/tcp open netbios-ssn 445/tcp open microsoft-ds 3389/tcp open ms-term-serv 3689/tcp open rendezvous
ps -ef | grep name-related-to-process
above command will give all the details like pid, start time about the process.
like if you want all java realted process give java or if you have name of process place the name
To check the status of a service on linux operating system :
//in case of super user(admin) requires sudo service status // in case of normal user service status
// in case of admin requires sudo service start/stop // in case of normal user service start/stop
To get the list of all services along with PID :
You can use systemctl instead of directly calling service :
systemctl status/start/stop
Dirty way to find running services. (sometime it is not accurate because some custom script doesn’t have |status| option)
[root@server ~]# for qw in `ls /etc/init.d/*`; do $qw status | grep -i running; done auditd (pid 1089) is running. crond (pid 1296) is running. fail2ban-server (pid 1309) is running. httpd (pid 7895) is running. messagebus (pid 1145) is running. mysqld (pid 1994) is running. master (pid 1272) is running. radiusd (pid 1712) is running. redis-server (pid 1133) is running. rsyslogd (pid 1109) is running. openssh-daemon (pid 7040) is running.
How to Check Services Running in Linux
Different operations are running in the background of Ubuntu and are not visible to the users. These services run for specific purposes and can only be managed by some utilities. One of these utilities is “systemctl” to start/stop services. These services make the processing unit of the computer busy, which consumes the battery health as well as slows down other programs.
Considering the importance of services, this post will provide the methods to check services on Linux. The outcomes of this article are:
Method 1: How to Check Services Running in Linux Using “systemctl” Utility?
As discussed earlier, the “systemctl‘ utility is the most used to manage the services on Linux-based systems. Let’s see how it can be used to list down services:
List Down Machine Services
First of all, we are supposed to list down all the machine services using the systemctl command:
$ systemctl list-units --type=service --all
There are different states of the services, these can be loaded, running, or not found.
Check Running Services
To display all the running services, use the command:
$ systemctl list-units --type=service --state=running
All the services in a running state will be displayed on the screen.
List Down the Loaded Services
Similarly, to display all the loaded services, simply use the command:
$ systemctl list-units --type=service
Show the Enabled Services
Likewise, to display the enabled services, use the command:
$ systemctl list-unit-files --state=enabled
List Down Disabled Services
To display the disabled services, change the state in the above command:
$ systemctl list-unit-files --state=disabled
These are the different commands that can be used to display the status of the services using the systemctl utility.
Method 2: How to Check Services Running on Linux Using “service” Command?
Apart from the “systemctl” utility, another utility named “service” can also provide the list of services running in Linux.
List Down All Services
The following “service” command will list down all the services on the Linux system:
In the above figure, the services with the “+” sign are running on the system where the services with the “-” sign are not running on the system.
Check Running Services
To list down only the running services, use the command:
Check Only Stopped Services
Likewise, to display the services which are not running but are installed on the system, use the command:
In these ways, the running services can be checked on Ubuntu.
That’s all from this guide!
Conclusion
To check the services running on Linux, open the terminal and run the command “systemctl list-units –type=service –state=running”. The service command “service –status-all | grep ‘\[ + \]’” can also list all the running services on Linux. Apart from the running services, the “systemctl” utility and “service” command can also be used to list the stopped or all services. This post has provided all the possible commands to check services running in Linux.
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How to Use systemctl status Command to Check Service Status
The systemctl is a command-line utility tool used to manage the systemd service. Systemd is a system and service manager for Linux operating systems. It is the new standard for managing Linux services.
Systemctl command is a lifesaver for Linux users and an absolute essential for managing services, daemons, and other processes running in the background on your machine. The command can list running services, start, stop, or restart them with ease. Plus, you can even check their logs to see what’s going on and troubleshoot any issues that might arise.
One of the most commonly used commands that you can use with systemctl is the systemctl status. This guide is about how to use this command in a Linux environment.
Using the systemctl status command
The systemctl status command is the easiest way to get a snapshot of your Linux system’s service’s health. You can use it to quickly find out which services are running, and services that stopped or crashed. This is your go-to tool when you want to check the status of the services installed on your machine.
When using this command, you will just need to open your terminal and type in systemctl status [service_name.service].
systemctl status service_name
Understanding the output of the systemctl status command
Knowing how to interpret the output of the `systemctl status` command in Linux can be a powerful tool for troubleshooting any issues with your system. It provides helpful insights into the current state of various services and daemons, including their uptime and whether they’re running properly.
The command will generate an abbreviated list of services on your system, along with their statuses. Let us look closely at the screenshot below.
The screenshot above indicates the service being checked is ssh.service.
If you notice the green dot (.) before the service, this usually indicates that the service is active and running. The color changes depending on the service status. In most cases, the red color indicates that the service is stopped or inactive while green means active and running. The date and time shown in the same line indicate the time since the service has been in its current state.
Main PID: this is the process ID for this process. You can use ps command to verify.
Cgroup: Shows the control group to which this particular process belongs.
At the bottom of the system status output shows the journal logged events for the service.
Common options for systemctl status command
There are several options you can use when running the systemctl status command, depending on how much information you need.
- -a — can be used to view all units
- -l — can be used to view only those services that are in a running state.
- -i — can be used to view more detailed information such as how long does service start-up or failed
- -f — can be used to show information about a service’s failed attempts. This is ideal for troubleshooting issues with one of your services.
- -all — can be used to view all services and their current status.
Examples of using systemctl status command
Here are a few examples of using the systemctl status command:
Check the status of a specific service: `systemctl status myservice`
The output shows Apache webserver is active running since 14th Dec 2022 10:06:53 hours. In the same way, you can check the service status of other programs such Nginx, Mysql, etc.
Check the status of all services: `systemctl status —all`
Check the overall system state: ‘systemctl status —full’
Conclusion
The systemctl status command is a one-stop shop for getting insight into what’s wrong with your system. It gives you detailed information about processes and services that are running and can provide quick diagnoses of any issues they might be having.
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