Ubuntu – How to read “service –status-all” results

services

I need to identify the currently running services but I can't figure out the results of running service --status-all, I mean what does ?, and + mean ?

$ service --status-all
 [ + ]  acpid
 [ + ]  anacron
 [ + ]  apparmor
 [ ? ]  apport
 [ ? ]  atieventsd
 [ + ]  avahi-daemon
 [ ? ]  binfmt-support
 [ + ]  bluetooth
 [ - ]  brltty
 [ + ]  console-font
 [ + ]  console-setup
 [ + ]  cron
 [ + ]  cups
 [ + ]  cups-browsed
 [ - ]  dbus
 [ ? ]  dns-clean
 [ + ]  friendly-recovery
 [ - ]  grub-common
 [ ? ]  irqbalance
 [ - ]  kerneloops
 [ ? ]  killprocs
 [ + ]  kmod
 [ ? ]  lightdm
 [ - ]  lm-sensors
 [ ? ]  mysql
 [ ? ]  networking
 [ ? ]  ondemand
 [ ? ]  pppd-dns
 [ - ]  procps
 [ - ]  pulseaudio
 [ ? ]  rc.local
 [ + ]  resolvconf
 [ + ]  rfkill-restore
 [ + ]  rfkill-store
 [ - ]  rsync
 [ + ]  rsyslog
 [ + ]  saned
 [ ? ]  sendsigs
 [ + ]  setvtrgb
 [ ? ]  speech-dispatcher
 [ - ]  sudo
 [ + ]  timidity
 [ + ]  udev
 [ ? ]  umountfs
 [ ? ]  umountnfs.sh
 [ ? ]  umountroot
 [ - ]  unattended-upgrades
 [ - ]  urandom
 [ + ]  virtualbox
 [ - ]  x11-common

And would running this command with sudo make any difference ? I tried it and in my case it didn't make any difference, but may it differ in other setups ?

Best Answer

The output of service --status-all lists the state of services controlled by System V.

The + indicates the service is running, - indicates a stopped service. You can see this by running service SERVICENAME status for a + and - service.

Some services are managed by Upstart. You can check the status of all Upstart services with sudo initctl list. Any service managed by Upstart will also show in the list provided by service --status-all but will be marked with a ?.

Reference: man service