How can I find failed systemd services?

Solution 1:

Try

sudo systemctl list-units --failed

or

sudo systemctl list-units --state=failed

Solution 2:

It seems like is-failed is the wrong sub command… who would have guessed.

here is some perl hackery to get the right answer:

$ systemctl list-units | perl -lanE'print if $F[2] !~ /active/'
  UNIT    LOAD   ACTIVE SUB       DESCRIPTION
● vboxautostart-service.service                                                             loaded failed failed    vboxautostart-service.service

LOAD   = Reflects whether the unit definition was properly loaded.
ACTIVE = The high-level unit activation state, i.e. generalization of SUB.
SUB    = The low-level unit activation state, values depend on unit type.

207 loaded units listed. Pass --all to see loaded but inactive units, too.
To show all installed unit files use 'systemctl list-unit-files'.

And systemctl is also that nice to clutter stderr with informational output in a way that we only get the output we want.