Basic SystemD Service Health Conditions

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12
SystemD

Situation

When a systemd service is not working properly, we sometimes forget to check the obvious.

Resolution

Before you begin detailed troubleshooting, check to see if the service RPM package is installed, it has passed an rpm validation, the service is configured to start at boot time, and the service is currently running. The cups service will be used as an example. For more information see the man pages for each of the commands used.

Viewing the Current State of the Service

# systemctl show cups.service | grep State=
LoadState=loaded
ActiveState=active
SubState=running
UnitFileState=enabled

You can also run systemctl with the status subcommand to show any errors in the log.

# systemctl status cups.service
cups.service - CUPS Printing Service
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/cups.service; enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Fri 2014-02-21 12:12:20 UTC; 47min ago
Main PID: 11563 (cupsd)
   CGroup: /system.slice/cups.service
           └─11563 /usr/sbin/cupsd -f

Feb 21 12:12:20 server12 systemd[1]: Started CUPS Printing Service.

Service Disabled at Boot

If a service is running, but disabled at boot time, the service will not be started when the server is rebooted. To enabled the service, run:

# systemctl enable cups.service

Service is not Running

Start the service with the systemctl command.

# systemctl start cups.service

Cause

Disclaimer

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