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Mohammad Reza Rezwani
Asked: 2014-05-28 11:02:49 +0800 CST

Why does terminal auto complete sometimes not suggest anything for the `services` command?

  • 772

Sometimes, when I type a command on the terminal, the terminal's autocomplete does not work, even if my command is not wrong.

For example, take look to this: sudo service vsftpd status sudo and service do not have any problem. I mean, when you type sud +tab terminal suggest you sudo or I type servi + tab terminal complete that to service. But for vsftpd I do not get any suggestion. Is there a way to say, "terminal, please tell me any suggestion!!?".

bash

6 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The degree to which auto-completion works is a function of how well the shell scripts in the bash-completion package work.

    In Ubuntu 14.04, the script that handles completions for service is in /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion. It looks for service names as files in /etc/rc.d/init.d and /etc/init.d, and in the output of systemctl list-units --full --all.

    But installing the vsftpd package doesn't put any files in /etc/init.d, because it has been systemd-ified; it puts a config file in /etc/systemd/system/vsftpd.service. systemctl list-units would find that file if not for the fact that Ubuntu, at the present time, doesn't include a systemctl command.

    So, at the moment, you won't get auto-completions for service vsftpd, but you will for most other services, since their config files are in /etc/init.d.

    • 33

  2. When there are multiple possible suggestions, tab will not produce any suggestion. Using tab tab (double tab) will produce a list of all possible suggestions.

    • 11

  3. vsftpd has probably more than 1 option. tab twice to view the possibilities.

    Example: li with tabtab shows:

    libnetcfg          line               lintian-info       lispmtopgm
libreoffice        linguist           linux32            listres
lightdm            link               linux64            
lightdm-session    lintian            linux-boot-prober
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  4. You can build your own!

    E.g.: put complete -f -r -c su -d 'Username' -a '(cat /etc/passwd|cut -d : -f 1)' into bash than if you have su and press tab/tab it gives you all users, yeah. See here

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  5. I've found that systemctl list-units --full --all does not list disabled services, so autocompletion doesn't

    # check if enabled
systemctl is-enabled <service_name>
# enable
systemctl enable <service_name>
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  6. The services command relies on "systemctl list-units --full --all", and does not list services that are unable to start (or disabled as above), to confirm if you experiencing this issue you can run 

    systemctl status <service_name>
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