Why does $ service --status-all output to STDERR instead of STDOUT?
Solution 1:
It might sound a bit strange but it does not. To be more exact, it displays only unknown [?]
statuses on the standard error (besides other error messages).
You can see the script in /usr/sbin/services
. The relevant part is the following (lines 68--98):
if [ -z "${SERVICE}" -a $# -eq 1 -a "${1}" = "--status-all" ]; then
cd ${SERVICEDIR}
for SERVICE in * ; do
case "${SERVICE}" in
functions | halt | killall | single| linuxconf| kudzu)
;;
*)
if ! is_ignored_file "${SERVICE}" \
&& [ -x "${SERVICEDIR}/${SERVICE}" ]; then
if ! grep -qs "\Wstatus)" "$SERVICE"; then
#printf " %s %-60s %s\n" "[?]" "$SERVICE:" "unknown" 1>&2
echo " [ ? ] $SERVICE" 1>&2
continue
else
out=$(env -i LANG="$LANG" PATH="$PATH" TERM="$TERM" "$SERVICEDIR/$SERVICE" status 2>&1)
if [ "$?" = "0" -a -n "$out" ]; then
#printf " %s %-60s %s\n" "[+]" "$SERVICE:" "running"
echo " [ + ] $SERVICE"
continue
else
#printf " %s %-60s %s\n" "[-]" "$SERVICE:" "NOT running"
echo " [ - ] $SERVICE"
continue
fi
fi
#env -i LANG="$LANG" PATH="$PATH" TERM="$TERM" "$SERVICEDIR/$SERVICE" status
fi
;;
esac
done
exit 0
The echo " [ + ] $SERVICE"
line does not print to standard error, and so the [ - ]
variant.
You can easily test the above assumption by running: services --status-all 2>/dev/null
. If you have any running service that supports the status command, it will be listed.