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guettli
Asked: 2018-11-30 03:48:09 +0800 CST

Parsable output from systemctl (for example list all units)

  • 772

I am not happy with the output of systemctl

I have a script which parses the output of 

systemctl list-units -t service --full --all

The beginning of the output look like this:

  UNIT                                   LOAD      ACTIVE     SUB          JOB   DESCRIPTION                                                                  
  after-local.service                    loaded    inactive   dead               /etc/init.d/after.local Compatibility                                        
● amavis.service                         not-found inactive   dead               amavis.service                                                               
  apparmor.service                       loaded    active     exited             Load AppArmor profiles                                                       
  auditd.service                         loaded    active     running            Security Auditing Service

On a different systemd the column with the dot (before amavis.service) does not exist.

Is there a machine/script readable output of systemctl?

systemd

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I use this for machine-parsable output, adding --plain --no-legend, for example:

    systemctl list-units -t service --full --all --plain --no-legend
    • 13

  2. you can get json (or json-pretty) output by setting the --output flag:

    systemctl list-units \
  --type service \
  --full \
  --all \
  --output json \
  --no-pager

    if your version of systemctl is without json output support, you can get json like so:

    systemctl list-units \
  --type service \
  --full \
  --all \
  --plain \
  --no-legend \
  --no-pager \
  | sed 's/ \{1,\}/,/g' \
  | jq \
    --raw-input \
    --slurp \
    'split("\n") | map(split(",")) | .[0:-1] | map( { "unit": .[0], "load": .[1], "active": .[2], "sub": .[3] } )'
    • 2